


bethlehem

by parsnipit



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Anxiety Attacks, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, basically just an unnecessarily long summary of tim's crappy childhood, bc i have a lot of Feelings about tim, he deserved better gosh darn it, it's been two years and i'm still Very Upset
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 02:10:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12422898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parsnipit/pseuds/parsnipit
Summary: He sees the monster for the first time when he’s three and climbing up the sun-warmed plastic slide at Clarkston Park. It is a shadow in and of itself, but with none of the give-and-take grace of the natural shadows he sees around him. This event is the start of the clawing, desperate thing that is Tim Wright’s life—and he’s not quite sure he’s going to be able to survive, because things just keep getting worse.





	bethlehem

**Author's Note:**

> this was written as a prequel to the brilliant youtube series marble hornets (and it was written exactly one year ago this month!!!) it's a tribute to one of my first fandoms (thanks, @angsty fifteen-year-old me!!!) and a sort of halloween special thing! as such, it is tremendously darker than most of the stuff i write, though!
> 
> warnings: self-harm, undiagnosed mental illness(es), hallucinations, panic attacks, anxiety, medication (and various side effects), parental neglect/abuse, blood, violence, self-loathing, mental facilities, breathing problems, mentions of suicidal thoughts/tendencies, mentions of murder/death, swearing

He sees the monster for the first time when he’s three and climbing up the sun-warmed plastic slide at Clarkston Park. It’s early afternoon, and sunshine enfolds the entirety of the world around him. It dances and dapples in the shade of the trees and the jungle gym, pulled back and forth by the breeze in an endless game of tug-of-war.

Where the monsters stands, though, there is a marked absence of sunlight, and that’s what draws Tim’s attention to it first. It is a shadow in and of itself, but with none of the give-and-take grace of the natural shadows he sees around him. It drags in light and presses it into a white halo where its face should be, and into the crisp lines of a suit blazer.

Cresting the top of the slide, he stares at it for a long, strange time. The gears in his mind, although unpracticed, are spinning around and around the idea of this monster. What is it? Is it a person? Why is it looking at him? Should he get his mama? Should he say hello?

He doesn’t have time to do any of those, because the monster is suddenly standing in front of him. Even though he’s up on the top of the jungle gym, its head is level with his, and he never even saw it move. The quick terror of it makes him jump, his foot sliding off of jungle gym’s platform and back onto the slide. He slams into the unforgiving plastic beneath him with all the inconsiderable force of his thirty-pound body, and his fingers scramble to latch onto the bars on the slide’s side to keep himself in place.

When he looks up again, after dragging himself back onto the platform, the monster is gone. There’s something hot and metallic coating his teeth, his mouth stings, and his elbows ache sharply—so he does the only logical thing and starts wailing. Fat, warm tears swell in his eyes, his nose begins to clog with snot, and his throat feels tight. None of these sensations do anything to soothe his rising hysteria, but they do bring his mama running.

“Tim? Oh, no, baby, what did you do? Come here, calm down. Let me see.” His mama crouches in front of him—her ascent up the jungle gym’s stairs in her summer dress is ungainly, but quick, and Tim loves her more for it. Her palms smell like vanilla lotion where they cup his cheeks, and they make the pain feel not so big. He cleaves to her, smearing snot and blood onto her clothes and bawling for all his little lungs are worth.

“Shh-shh, Tim, you’re alright, you’re okay,” she says, scooping him up and carrying him off of the jungle gym. She sits them on one of the benches, underneath the trees with the give-and-take shadows. “You just hurt your lip, you’re fine.”

Despite her reassurances, his sobs don’t ease. He doesn’t think he could make them, even if he wanted to. The pain in his lip is a steady throb, and the saliva he swallows is thick and warm with his own blood—more than any of that, though, the idea of the monster stays in the forefront of him mind, and with it, so does raw terror.

He is inexplicably sure that the monster is going to do something awful, and he is just as sure that he wants nothing to do with it.

“Mama, Mama, there’s a monster,” he says, clutching at her shoulders to get more of her attention because she’s fussing over his lip. He points at the slide, where the monster was. “It was there, it was over there. Mama, go look. You have to look.”

His mama picks him up again, settling him on her hip, and she looks over there. She takes him with her, even though he’s tells her not to and hides his face in her neck when she does anyway. What if it jumps out at them? What if it hurts his mama? What if it hurts him?

It doesn’t, though. His mama shows him all around the slide, and there’s no monster. He even dares to look out away from the jungle gym, where it was at first, and there’s sunshine out there. Feeling confused, but better, because there’s no monster anywhere in sight and his mama says there never was, Tim stops crying.

Mama finishes dabbing the blood off of his mouth with a Kleenex, and then she pulls him into her lap and kisses his forehead. “There,” she says. “All better.”

“Nuh-uh,” Tim says, touching his lip. It feels sore and puffy, and his elbows hurt, too. “It still hurts.”

“Are you ready to go home? You can take some medicine and a nap.”

For once, Tim thinks that maybe a nap would be okay. Crying makes him sleepy. “Yeah.”

When his mama is buckling him into his carseat, he risks one last glance out at the park. It’s bright and clean and sunshine-y, but there’s one shadow that seems too dark and ungraceful, hovering underneath the trees. Tim looks away before he sees anything more than that, because it’s just his imagination. That’s what Mama says.

Just his imagination.

✖✖✖

The monster is outside of his bedroom window. Tim has been waiting for it to go away, because that’s what his mama said he should do when he sees it, but it’s been out there much longer than usual. Soon it will come closer—it will come through his window, and it will eat him up like sunshine, and it will destroy him. He can’t say how he knows this, only that he knows it in the same way he knows that water quenches thirst.

He also knows that he shouldn’t tell his mama he’s seeing it again. She gets a line between her eyebrows whenever he mentions it, and he doesn’t like that line. It means she’s unhappy. Besides, she’s got friends over today, and—

The monster comes closer.

Tim bolts.

His mama is in the living room, chatting with the friends that always ruffe Tim’s hair and pat his shoulder without asking so he doesn’t like them but he can’t say that. There’s a cigarette clasped between her lips, and Tim’s not supposed to breathe in that smoke ‘cause it’s bad for him, but he _needs_ her to make the monster go away.

“Mama, the monster’s outside my window and it’s going to—”

“Tim,” she says, and there’s a bad sound in her voice, hovering somewhere between annoyed and sad. She’s started using that voice more, and it makes Tim’s stomach flutter unhappily. “There’s no monster.”

“No, but there is. It’s outside my window. I saw it.”

“There is _no monster,_ Timothy.”

“No, there—”

“I’m sorry,” his mama says, but not to him—to her friends, who are looking at Tim with what he thinks is called pity. “He has such a vivid imagination. Tim, listen, you have to learn when to play games and when not to. When Mom’s trying to talk with her friends, that’s one of those times when you can’t bother her, okay? I’ll have to play with you later, bud.”

“But Mama, the monster—”

“I don’t want to hear about the monster right now, Tim. We’ll talk about it later.”

_“Mama—”_

“Do _not_ raise your voice, young man. Go back to your room and we’ll talk later.”

Tim stares at her, caught somewhere between terror and disbelief. He can’t go back to his room, because the monster will hurt him. He can’t stay here, because his mother will be angry. But why won’t she just come look? Sure, maybe she hasn’t seen it before, but she’s always made it go away. All she has to do is walk into his room.

“Tim. Now.”

Tim turns and pads out of the living room. He won’t go back to his bedroom, though. No way. The next best place would be the bathroom, he supposes, so he goes there. He uncaps the toothpaste and he starts drawing with it and maybe that’ll make his mama mad, but he’s kind of mad, too. He is also, he realizes after a few seconds of aimless doodling in the sink, privy to his mama’s conversation through the bathroom’s thin door. Curiosity overtaking him, he creeps back towards the door and presses his ear against it.

“I hate to even bring it up, but have you ever thought about—I don’t know. Have you thought about having someone look at him?” That’s his mother’s red-headed friend. Why is she talking about him? She is talking about him, right? He’s the only _him_ in the house.

“What do you mean?” That’s Mama’s voice, but it’s edgier than usual, in that way that means she’s gonna be angry soon.

“I mean—oh, Colleen, I’m not trying to offend you. It’s only that, well, he’s been seeing this thing for about a year now. Don’t you think—”

“It’s just his imagination.”

“I hope so, but better safe than sorry, right? If I were you, I’d get him tested, just in case. When he starts school—”

“You’re not me,” Mama says, her voice chilled. “I appreciate your advice, but I’d appreciate it more if you let me raise my child the way I see fit.”

There’s a silence, thick and sharp, and Tim slinks back to the sink. He draws aimless squiggles with lines of his mama’s cinnamon toothpaste, and he thinks. What does he need to get tested for? Is it for school? Mama says that there are tests in school, and that everybody takes them. So why doesn’t she want him to get tested? Is it a bad test?

Frowning, Tim sucks the toothpaste off of his finger and walks towards the shower to get the shaving cream. Why does it matter, anyway? All he wants is for Mama to make the monster go away. He doesn’t care about taking stupid tests, so there’s no reason for that red-headed lady to make his mama upset about them.

Suddenly, there’s a crackle of noise off to his left. He slaps his hand over his ear and whirls around, startled. The room is empty, so what had that been? More importantly, what if Mama heard and knows he’s here, instead of in his bedroom where he’s supposed to be? What if she gets mad at him?

All of that ceases to matter when the monster appears, arching over him in a monochrome streak of long limbs and loud, popping noise. Tim throws himself backwards, tripping into the shower and tearing the curtain on his way down. He freezes there, horror rising from his stomach and pushing into his throat like hot bile until it bursts out as a panicked scream.

His mama comes bursting into the bathroom, her eyes wild with fright and searching him out. “Tim? Tim, what’s wrong? What happened?”

Tim curls into himself, shivering. He tore the stupid curtain, and he painted with Mama’s toothpaste, and he eavesdropped, and now Mama’s gonna be mad—

“Tim. Tim, hey, talk to me, honey.” His mama’s hands hook under his armpits and haul him out of the shower, setting him on his feet. He wobbles unsteadily, and he sees her friends looking in on them, all curious crow-eyes. His face feels hot.“What’s the matter? Are you hurt?”

“It was the monster,” he says, and he regrets it as he sees his mama’s face fall and shutter itself immediately. “It was in here. It came inside.”

“Oh, Tim.” His mama’s breath leaves her in a tired sigh, but she picks him up and lets him bury his face in her shoulder. “The monster isn’t real.”

Tim loves his mama, but he also knows that she’s a liar.

✖✖✖

The tree branches shake like wet dogs in the wind, spraying water from their leaves and onto Tim’s clothes. His shirt is already soaked, and his toes are cold and soggy inside of his sneakers. He has never wanted to go home so badly. If he were home, he could dry his hair off with his fluffy duck towel, and he could bury himself in his blankets and have Mama read to him until his heart stopped pounding so fiercely.

The monster is at home, though, and Tim doesn’t know what to do. He can’t tell his mama because she gets upset if he talks about it, and he hates upsetting her. It makes his stomach feel bad and tied-up, and that’s almost worse than being around the monster.

Almost.

This time, Tim had broken his promise to himself and he’d upset his mama. But the monster had been inside _—_ of course, that’s not _that_ strange anymore, except for this time it followed Tim from room to room and it made all of the hairs stand up on his neck, and it made his heart go too fast in his chest. _Thump-thump, thump-thump, thumpthump, thumpthumpthumpthump._

So he’d told his mama, and his mama had sighed. That wasn’t the worst part, though. The worst part was when he went into his mama’s bedroom to tell her about it, the monster followed him. It didn’t disappear when his mama was around. It was supposed to disappear when his mama was around—it _always_ disappeared when his mama was around.

But this time it didn’t. It didn’t, and Mama wouldn’t listen to him even though he was crying about it, and he didn’t know what to do. Going outside was maybe stupid, but if the monster was inside, then it might stay inside. That seemed to make sense at the time.

Now, huddled in the forest with rain leaking down his back and the trees making spooky, skeletal rattling sounds, he thinks that it didn’t make very much sense at all. The monster is gone, but he’s cold and wet and hungry and he doesn’t know how to get back home. _Stupid,_ he thinks, clinging to one of the damp oaks beside him. _Stupid idea, stupid kid._

Mama is going to be so angry.

_If she can find him._ What if he’s just lost here forever? What if he starves to death because nobody knows where he is? Is anybody even looking for him? Does his mama even want him back? Maybe she’s happy he’s gone. She won’t have to hear about the monster anymore, at least.

Sniffling, Tim sits and curls his knees up to his chest, because he knows that you’re supposed to stay in one place when you’re lost. That’s how people find you. (Assuming they’re looking, that is.) He pulls his shirt down over his legs and then jams his face through the collar. His breath bounces back off of the thin cotton—it smells like pizza and orange juice, but it makes his face feel warm. That’s how he’s sitting when he hears the footsteps.

His heart drops down into his stomach, and his whole body tenses up. The footsteps are heavy, crunching on autumn-dried leaves and snapping twigs like fingerbones. Tim’s never heard the monster walk, but maybe it sounds like this—maybe it’s the monster coming to find him.

Untangling himself from his shirt, Tim jumps to his feet and ducks behind one of the trees. Peering through a knot of branches and leaves, he sees an unfamiliar man striding towards him. Although Tim knows that he should be scared of strangers, he can only feel relief. A man is not a monster—and besides, he’s wearing a police uniform. That means he’s good, right?

“Timothy? Are you Timothy Wright?” the man asks, and Tim flinches in surprise. He hadn’t expected the man to have seen him, but evidently his hiding skills are not as good as they could be. That’s disappointing.

“Yeah,” he says, staying glued to the tree’s solid, rain-soaked side. “Who’re you?”

“I’m Officer Briggs. I’ve been looking for you, and if it’s alright, I’d like to take you back to your house.”

“You know how to get to my house?” Tim asks. Why does this stranger know, when Tim himself doesn’t?

“I do,” Officer Briggs says. “Let me show you.”

Tim edges away from the tree and closer to the officer, hope drawing him along like a fish on a line. He really wants this guy to get him back home, but—well. “Is my mama mad?”

“Hm? Oh, no, son, she’s just worried.” Officer Briggs smiles sympathetically, taking his jacket off and wrapping it around Tim’s shoulders. It smells like smoke and watered-down cologne, and Tim nuzzles happily into it. “Come on. Stay close by, okay? You don’t want to get lost again.”

Tim follows the officer out of the woods, sticking obediently to his side until they emerge onto a well-worn trail. There’s a cop car parked there, and Officer Briggs lets him ride in the front—without his car seat, even, but he still has to buckle up and the seat belt rubs against his neck. They arrive back at his house in only five minutes, and as soon as he climbs out of the car, Mama is there. She picks him up, crushing him against her in a way that kind of hurts, and she’s kissing his face and crying and saying things really fast.

They have to answer a lot of questions, after that, but it’s okay. Tim changes into dry clothes, and he gets to sit in a big blanket and drink apple juice while he talks to the officers. When they leave, it’s past Tim’s bedtime, but his mama still makes him take a hot bath and drink nasty cold medicine. She bundles him up in his bed when he’s done, and then she sits beside him and strokes his hair.

“Are you gonna go to bed?” Tim asks. He doesn’t mind her being here—her fingers in his hair feel nice, actually, driving away the headache that’s growing  behind his eyes—but she doesn’t usually stay once he’s tucked in.

“In a little while,” Mama says. She takes a deep breath, and Tim tugs the blankets up closer to his chin. Is she gonna get mad at him for getting lost now? She hasn’t yet, but maybe she was just waiting. “Why did you run away, Tim?”

“I told you,” Tim says, squirming uncomfortably. He had told her earlier—or rather, he had told the officers earlier, and Mama had been right next to him. “The monster was here.”

“Tim, you know—you know the monster isn't real, right? You know that?”

Mama’s voice sounds strange, all twisted up with stress, and Tim’s eyes drop guiltily to his blankets. He plucks at a loose string there, biting his lip. What is he supposed to say? He knows what his mama wants him to say, and he knows the truth. Which one of those matters more?

“Tim, hey. You don’t actually think that the monster is real, do you?” Mama’s hands come up to the sides of his face, making him meet her eyes. They’re pretty eyes—they’re golds and greens where Tim’s are only muddy, stupid browns. “Answer me. No games.”

“It _is_ real, Mama,” Tim says, and his own voice sounds strange and watery. “It _is._ ”

“Oh, Tim.” Mama’s hands move away to cover her own face. She takes a shuddering breath and Tim shrinks down into his blankets—he’s done it again, he’s upset her. He should have just lied.

“‘m sorry,” he says, twisting his hands around each other until it hurts. “‘m sorry, Mama. I didn’t wanna get lost, I just—I just wanted—”

“Never mind, Tim. Forget it.” His mama gets up, rubbing her eyes. “It’s alright.”

It doesn’t feel alright. Saying that would only make her sadder, though. “Okay.”

“But don’t you ever do that again. Do you understand me?” Her voice is hardening, and she’s moving away from his bed. Is she mad at him? “I was worried sick.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Tim says. “Sorry.”

“Goodnight.”

Mama turns off his lights, and she doesn’t turn on his nightlight. He doesn’t dare ask her to, though. She’d think he was only afraid of the monster. (And it would be true.) “Night.”

His door closes with a click that feels too loud and too final. Coiling himself up in his blankets and hiding his eyes in his pillow, Tim tries to sleep. His mind keeps spinning, though, whirling around and around what if’s and why’s and will’s and he won’t ever tell his mama about the monster again, not if it makes her so sad. He can’t rest, even though he’s tired and sick of thinking.

Ugh—his head really doesn’t feel good.

✖✖✖

Of all the awful feelings that have latched themselves onto him like so many sticky-stubborn beggartick seeds, the exhaustion is the worst. Where the pain and the fear come and go, ebbing in like tidal waves on a broken surf, exhaustion is his ever-present companion. It has not left him once, not since his headache has started in the middle of class, wearing him down as he tries to trace the letter “B” onto his paper with imprecise, clumsy pencil scratches.

Frustration comes quickly with the dull throb behind his temples, and he slams his pencil down onto his desk with a loud huff. He can’t draw the stupid B—and why does he need to, anyway? His mama’s the one who writes everything. It won’t do him any good to know how.

“Tim?” Ms. William’s voice comes from behind him, startling him. He’s in school, that’s right—and there are other people in school, who aren’t his mama or his mama’s friends. That’s strange. “How are you doing, buddy?”

“I can’t do it,” Tim says, craning his neck around to see her.

“Sure you can,” she says. Her voice is too cheerful, and upon realizing that, Tim thinks that it’s true for all the other kids in the room, too. They’re all too noisy and bright-voiced. “Here, pick your pencil back up. I’ll show you.”

“I can’t,” Tim says, but he grabs his pencil back, anyway. “It’s too hard.”

“You’ve been doing really good,” Ms. Williams says. “Here, make a circle, and another circle below that. Then draw a line down both of their sides—see, there you go. That’s a very nice B.”

Tim sighs. It’s a bad B—it’s nothing like the one that’s typed on the page—but whatever. Teachers can’t say mean things. “Okay. Can we be done now?”

“Not yet. You have to do a few more letters, but then we can go outside for recess.”

Tim thinks that’s stupid, but his mama told him not to argue with adults. “Fine. How many more letters?”

“Just finish the page, and then you can read until everyone else is done.”

Tim doesn’t point out that he can’t read. She must know that, after all. It’s why she’s teaching them about letters in the first place. She probably just means he can look at the picture books on the shelf. Normally, that might be kind of fun, but it’s hard to concentrate on things when his head is hurting.

Scraping out a few more crooked letters before he gives up again, Tim discovers that his headache is, in fact, getting worse. The headaches usually aren’t so bad, and most times he can ignore them like his mama says to. He had been hoping this was one of those, but it isn’t stopping its painful progression along the front of his skull. Looking at the paper is making it worse, so he shoves it away.

Putting his head on his desk, Tim cradles his face in his arms. It makes a dark, warm cocoon, and that helps. The low, creaking ache trapped inside his skull dims itself. Relieved, he lets his shoulders and back relax, and that helps even more. If everyone would stop talking, he bets it would go away completely.

He hears Ms. William’s shoes clicking on the ground before he hears her voice. “Tim? Your paper isn’t done. Sit up, please.”

Tim pushes himself back up, trying to make his face look sad at her. “My head hurts.”

“I’ll tell you what—why don’t you finish this paper and then, if it’s still hurting, I’ll let you go to the nurse. Does that sound alright?”

Tim looks bleakly at his paper. He still has finish B, and then do C and D. Even thinking about it draws his headache back up. “Can’t I go down there now?”

“I think you can finish first,” she says. Tim shrugs, fiddling with his pencil. “Okay, Tim?”

“Okay.” He just has to finish, right? If he finishes, his headache will stop. Putting his pencil back against the paper, Tim forces himself to ignore the growing pain behind his eyes and finish B and C. By the time he starts on D, though, the pain has advanced from annoying to agonizing. He doesn’t even want to go to recess or the nurse anymore—he just wants his mama.

Hiding his face in his arms provides no respite, this time. The dark only makes him notice how big the pain in his head is getting, and his clothes aren’t thick enough to block out the noise of everyone around him. Their voices grate against his ears, mashing his brain into little, hurting pieces. His stomach rolls with the pain, and he feels like he can’t get enough air.

Is he dying? Is he going to die? What if the monster’s here, what if it’s causing this? He is suddenly sure that if he looks up, he will see it in the corner of the classroom, even though it doesn’t like being around lots of people. It’s trying to kill him. Glassy, frightened tears start to well in his eyes. He doesn’t want to die.

“Tim, your paper still isn’t done. Do you need some more help?” Ms. William’s voice, although it’s cottony and kind, only makes his head hurt worse. “Tim? I need you to sit up.”

And he needs his head to stop hurting, but people don’t always get what they need. Angrily, he twists his fingers into his hair and pulls—pinpricks of pain scatter themselves onto his scalp, but they’re not enough to distract him from the larger, stronger pain biting in his skull. A frustrated sob hitches in his chest. Why won’t it just _stop?_

“Tim, sit up.” Ms. William’s hand touches his shoulder, and he jumps to his feet in a quick flash of terrified energy, knocking his chair back with a loud clatter. The other kids’ eyes whip up, locking onto him. Silence—blissful and condemning—settles over the class. The fluorescents overhead are blinding, throwing themselves through his eyes and into his brain like broad, blue-tinted daggers.

“Timothy.” Ms. William’s voice is overwhelming in the quiet, sharp and stiff. “Pick up your chair. Now, please. I believe we’ll be taking a visit to the principal’s office.”

Tim grinds the heels of his hands into his eyes, unwilling to look at the light (or the monster that could, at any moment, appear to suck it all away) any longer. “No,” he says.

He hears her take a deep breath, and he knows what she’s about to do. It’s the same thing his mama always does. She’s gonna tell him he’s making a big deal out of nothing, imagining things, and that he’s acting so _awful,_ why can’t he just be good—

“‘m really sorry, miss,” he says, chancing a teary-eyed glance in her direction. “My head hurts a lot.”

He expects her to brush him off, but she seems to deflate all at once. All the lines of her face soften, and when she speaks again, her voice is quieter. “Alright, Tim. Let’s go see the nurse, okay?”

Will the nurse be able to make his headache go away? He really, really hopes so. Nodding his head down, he takes Ms. William’s hand and lets her lead him to the nurse’s office. She leaves him there—she has to go take care of her other students, she says—and the nurse makes him sit in one of his big plastic chairs.

“So you have a bit of a headache, huh, bud?” the nurse asks, rummaging through his drawers. Tim makes a tentative sound of confirmation, and the nurse runs through a few quick tests—taking his temperature, shining a light in his eyes, looking at his throat and his ears.

“Do you have medicine?” Tim asks when the nurse rolls his office chair away again, meekly twisting his fingers together. He understands that tests are important for doctors and things, but all he has is a headache, and he knows there’s medicine for that.

“I do, as a matter of fact. I just need to look and see if your mom’s given us permission to give you any. It should only take a few minutes.”

“Oh, it’s okay,” Tim says. “She gives me medicine all the time.”

“Is that right?” the nurse asks, glancing back at him with a strange expression. “Do you have headaches a lot?”

“Mm-hm,” Tim says. “But usually they aren’t so bad. I was trying to draw my B and I couldn’t, so I think maybe that’s why.”

“Maybe,” the nurse says, but he’s frowning as he looks at his computer. After a few minutes, he goes to his cabinets and pulls out a bottle of Tylenol. “Now, I know it’s gross, but if you can drink some of this, your headache’ll go away and I’ll give you a peppermint.”

“Okay,” Tim says. He hates the taste of Tylenol, but he’s kind of gotten used to it, and it’s more than worth it to make his headache go away. The nurse hands him a little medicine cup and he gulps it all down, swallowing fast to get the goop out of his mouth as quickly as he can. He drinks a glass of water after that, and then he chews on the peppermint that the nurse promised him and swings his legs back and forth.

“I just have a few more questions, Tim, if you’re feeling up to it,” the nurse says.

Tim’s head still hurts, but he thinks he can answer just a few more questions. “‘kay.”

“How often do you have these headaches?”

“Dunno,” Tim says, furrowing his brow to think better. “I don’t really remember.”

The nurse jots something down on his clipboard. “And how often have you been having them?”

Tim shrugs. “Since I got lost, I think. Maybe.”

“Got lost? When did that happen?”

“In the fall, ‘cause there were leaves on the ground. I remember that part.”

“Last fall?” the nurse asks. There are concentrating squiggles between his eyes. “Or more recently? Like this fall?”

“It was a long time ago,” Tim says. “Ask Mama. She knows.”

“Alright. I’ll do that.” The nurse smiles some, writing more on his paper. “Does anything else happen when you get these headaches?”

“Can I have another peppermint?” Tim asks, looking over at the pretty candy bowl on the nurse’s desk. “Please?”

“Sure, since you’re being so helpful.” The nurse hands him another peppermint, and Tim busies his hands with unwrapping it. “So. Does anything else happen during your headaches? Nosebleeds, earaches, that kind of thing?”

“No,” Tim says—he isn’t allowed to talk about the monster in front of other people, not since that time with Mama’s friends and him tearing the shower curtain. “Or, um—sometimes my throat gets itchy and I’m not good at breathing.”

“Not good at breathing? Could you explain that more?”

“Like, you know, like I want to cough and stuff. Like having a cold.”

“Ah, I see,” the nurse says, nodding knowingly. “And do you get colds often?”

“I dunno,” Tim says, swinging his legs and stretching to see if he can touch the ground with his toes. “How many more questions?”

“Oh, that’s right. You’re probably tired, huh? That’ll be enough for now.” The nurse stands up and sets his clipboard off to the side, stretching so his back clicks and pops. “Do you think you can go back to class?”

He doesn’t _want_ to, but his headache has started to go away and he does feel better. “Yeah,” he says, reluctantly climbing off of his chair. “Do I have to?”

“I think it would be better,” the nurse says, walking him to the door. “Do you know how to get back on your own?”

He’s only been in school for a few days, but he thinks he knows how he got the nurse’s office with Ms. Williams. Will she be mad at him for complaining about his headache when he gets back? He hopes she’s not. He wants her to like him. “Yeah,” he says.

“Awesome. I’ll see you later, bud.”

Tim takes a deep, bolstering breath and starts marching down the hallway. He can do this, right? It’s only a few more hours, and then he gets to go home and play outside. All the other kids seem to think it’s easy, so why should it be any different for him?

(Only, his headache never fully goes away that day, his throat is dry no matter how much chocolate milk he drinks at lunch, and the monster is there to greet him at the bus stop.)

✖✖✖

There is a creature in his head and it’s not his friend—it prowls around the curves of his skull, nipping his brain in its massive teeth until everything between his hair and his shoulders is a sinking hole of agony. The shelter he’s made for himself under his blankets, warm and dark, does nothing to deter it. His mama, for once, has designed to let him suffer in peace, since she had to go to her new job. She hasn’t made him go to school, she’s gone so the house is quiet, and she even gave him some cold medicine and a glass of water.

That was this morning, though, and any effect the medicine may have had has long since worn off. He’s shivering with pain that would make him whimper, or sob, if any noise didn’t whip his headache back into a frothing fury. His cough isn’t helping any, either. Though his throat itches, he doesn’t dare allow himself to even clear it, for fear of what the jostling would do to the hurt in his head.

He wants his mama to come home in the same second as he wants her to stay away. If she were home, maybe she could give him more water, and more medicine. On the other hand, she would make noise doing those things, and Tim shudders just considering it. Plus, she would think he was being a baby, just like when he told her about the monster. (He’s stopped doing that, now.)

The hours pass in a slow fuzz of pain. He thinks that maybe he sleeps, on and off and restless, but he can’t be sure. All of his thoughts are blurry and heavy, dragging themselves senselessly back and forth through his mind. Does he have homework? Will he have more homework because he’s absent today? He misses Ms. Williams—he misses being a kindergartener. The first grade is harder, and he can’t focus well.

He’s heard Mama talking to his new teacher about it. They trade words like ADHD and special needs over his head—like he can’t understand. He _does,_ though. His friend Ashley in the third grade has ADHD, and that means she can’t focus well, and that’s okay. It’s not Tim’s problem, though. He _can_ focus, he can focus a lot for a long time, just not on the stuff that they want him to focus on.

The monster takes all of his focus, and he hates it. It’s gotten used to being around other people now, just like Tim, because they’re both in school all the time. It’s there when he’s at recess, climbing on the monkeybars. It’s there when he’s at lunch, eating chicken nuggets and slimy-sweet peaches. It’s there when he’s in class, fumbling his way through math problems he can’t wrap his head around.

Mama must know that, even though she doesn’t acknowledge the monster anymore. She told his teacher he didn’t have ADHD. In fact, she told his teacher he was a perfectly well-rounded, healthy, intelligent young man. He’s not, though, any more than he’s ADHD. Even he can see that. It would upset Mama if he told her so, and he keeps his mouth shut. Being strange must be really bad—bad like seeing the monster, or staying home because of headaches, or always having a scratch in his throat.

Downstairs, he hears the door open with ears that he swears are made more powerful by pain. Wincing, he bites down on his lip and squeezes his eyes shut tighter. He hopes his mama won’t come up here. It’s nicer if she leaves him alone until his head stops hurting so much, he decides, even though he wants medicine and water.

He’s not that lucky, though.

“Tim?” Mama says, coming through his door on a rush of cool air. “Are you asleep?”

Yeah, he wishes. Speaking right now is unfathomable, however, so he’ll let her think that if she will.

“Tim, honey.” She sits on the edge of his bed with a creak, and he wants to groan. When she starts to pull his blankets back, letting cold light pierce into his little shelter, he does groan—

That’s when it gets worse.

What little noise manages to escape his throat, raspy and rough, makes him cough, and then he can’t stop coughing. His previously well-ordered breathes are suddenly choppy and desperate, and he can’t enough air in between the hacking convulsions that suddenly seize his body. His lungs feel a size too small, his throat feels thick and raw, and his head _hurts._

Digging his nails into his blankets, Tim gasps for air that won’t come—he just chokes it back out around another coughing fit, and another, and another. He barely registers his mama standing, and her words are too quick and too loud in his ears. Terror, whole and blinding, wraps itself around his body.

Is he dying? Is he going to die? He can’t breathe, he can’t get enough air—and he can’t tell his mama, he can’t ask her for help, because he can’t stop coughing long enough to talk. His vision is blurring around the edges, and then he’s being moved. Pain lances through his head and he cries out, the noise butchered by his coughs. Distantly, he realizes that he’s moving—pushing against his mama, because she’s moving him around and it _hurts_ and he can’t—

He can’t breathe, he can’t stop coughing, he just can’t breathe, there’s not enough air in his room and his head feels like it’s exploding he can’t breathe he can’t breathe hecan’tbreathe—

The world stops.

He wakes up in a hospital, and his body doesn’t feel right. Blinking his eyes open reveals an unfamiliar room, and perhaps his first feeling should be fear. Instead, it’s relief, because he can breathe and his headache is finally, finally gone.

Mama is with him. Her head is lying on his weird hospital bed, hair a tangled mess of brown strands around her face. It doesn’t look comfortable. “Mama?” he says, reaching out to touch her face—he pulls back before he can, though. She might be angry, and if she is, then she won’t like him touching her.

“Tim?” Mama sits up, pushing her hair out of her eyes and looking at him with wide, nervous eyes. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Tim says. “Are we at the doctor’s?”

Mama’s face crumples like a wet paper sack, scribbled on with stress lines and tear tracks, and then she’s grabbing for him. She clutches him to her chest and buries her nose against his neck—it’s cold and uncomfortable, but he doesn’t squirm. There are quiet crying noises coming from her, so he thinks that he should probably just be quiet and sit still.

It must be the right decision, because Mama pulls back after only a few seconds. She wipes her eyes and clears her throat, sitting back down in her chair and smoothing out her jacket. “Oh, Tim,” she says, and her voice is raspy. He’s upset her again. Stupid him. “Yes, we’re at the doctor’s. How do you feel?”

Tim stretches, moving all his bones and muscles and seeing how they feel. Even if everything ached, the utter absence of pain in his head would have made it insignificant. As it is, that’s unnecessary. The crook of his elbow hurts, and there’s tape there, but all the other parts of his body feel fine. “I’m okay. Why are we here? Why aren’t we home?”

“You had a—well. Do you remember anything? From yesterday?”

He remembers wanting to crack his own head open to pull all the hurting parts out, and he remembers coughing where he should have been breathing. But he doesn’t want to remember that. “A little.”

“That’s why we’re here. The doctors are going to run some tests, and they’ll want to talk to you later.”

“Oh.” Tim plucks curiously at the tape on his elbow—was that one of the tests?—but his mama swats his hand away.

“Don’t play with that. You’ll hurt yourself.”

“What is it?”

“It’s where the doctors put in an IV.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s like a—oh, I don’t, Tim. Ask the doctors when they get here.”

“‘kay.” Tim looks around the room, curious. He’s never been in a hospital before. “Can I get up?”

“Not yet,” Mama says. “Not until the doctors say you can.”

Tim sighs. It seems like forever before the doctors come, and that’s annoying. He’s getting hungry, and he wants to walk around, but Mama refuses to let him. She plays little-kid games with him instead—I-Spy and Go Fish and only one grown-up game of Texas Hold ‘Em that Tim’s not very good at.

When the nurse comes—it’s a nurse, not a doctor like Mama said—she shines a light in his eyes and makes him hold a thermometer under his tongue ‘till it beeps and then she ask him questions like _what do you remember_ and _does this happen often._ Tim answers them all as best he can, but his mama still answers more than him. When he’s done with that, the nurse says he can get up and even picks him up and puts him on the ground. His legs feel wobbly, but the nurse says that’s just because he’s been laying down for a while.

He explores the room while the nurse and his mama talk. He’s careful around all the strange equipment ‘cause Mama said to be, but when he gets to the window he jumps up on his tippy-toes to see outside. The city lights are bright and dazzling around him, sparkles in the darkness, and the windows of the buildings around them are all orange squares cut out of the night sky.

The only thing to ruin it is the monster standing in the parking lot, a few floors below him. Tim flinches at the sight of it. He knows it did this. It made his head hurt, and it made him cough ‘till he couldn’t breathe. He can’t say how he knows, but he knows. It just makes sense.

So what if it tries to do it again?

Warily, Tim moves away from the window and climbs into his mama’s lap. He closes his eyes and pretends like he’s napping, but really he’s listening to her talk to the nurse. They’re trading words, just like Mama and his teacher did, but they’re different words. _Possible disorder_ and _seizure activity_ and _neurologist._

He doesn’t know what those words mean. His friend Ashley in the third grade doesn’t have any of those things. Somewhere in the pit of his stomach, fear builds, and for the first time in his life—the first of many, many times—Tim wonders:

_What’s wrong with me?_

✖✖✖

“Hey, Tim. What’s up?” Doctor García says, crouching in front of him and sticking her hand out. Tim takes it in his own—a real handshake, like grown-ups do.

“Not a lot—oh, except for my friend Alex has a birthday party and I get to go to it tomorrow,” Tim says. Even the thought of it is exciting. There’ll be cake and ice cream and presents and games and it’s gonna be _great._

“Awesome. I’m sure that’ll be a lot of fun.” Doctor García straightens up and gives her hand to Mama. “And good morning, Ms. Wright. How are you?”

Mama smiles, tired and cracked, but she says, “I’m very well, thank you.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Come this way, please.” She takes them to her room, and she sits down with Mama to go over papers while Tim plays with the puzzles in the toy box. He pretends not to listen, because that seems to make Mama and Doctor García more comfortable, but he hears every single word they say.

He’s kind of happy, actually, because he can understand more of what they’re talking about now—they say MRI (he had that—it was scary), and EEG (he had that too—boring), and abnormal (which is another word for strange which is bad). There are still some words he doesn’t understand, though, and nobody seems willing to tell him what they mean. There are words like _anticonvulsant_ and _psychosomatic disorder_ and _psychiatric referral._

Mama doesn’t like those words. Her knuckles get white on her chair and her jaw tenses up when Doctor García says them, and Tim focuses harder on his puzzle because he hates when she’s upset and it’s his fault they’re here.

“Tim?” Doctor García says.

Tim’s head snaps up, his eyes jerking to the doctor’s face, and then to Mama’s. “Yeah?”

“May I speak to you for a moment? Privately?”

Tim looks to his Mama for permission, but she won’t meet his eyes. There are angry lines between her brows, and his stomach squirms. “Um—um, Mama? Is that okay?”

“I don’t care,” Mama says, and her voice is hard and cold like Tim’s been talking about monsters or headaches or feeling scared. “I’ll just step outside.”

She does, her movements stiff and jerky, and Tim feels himself shrinking towards the floor. _Sorry_ clings to the tip of his tongue like soured honey, sticky and sickening. Is she mad at him? He didn’t mean to make her mad. What should he have said? What did he do wrong?

Doctor García takes a deep breath and leans forward in her chair, folding her hands together. “Alright, Tim. I’m going to ask you a few questions, and I need you to be completely honest with me. Does that sound like something you can do?”

Tim shuffles his puzzle pieces nervously in his hands. What if she asks about the monster? What if she doesn’t, and Tim says something on accident, and she tells Mama? Mama’d be so _angry._ “I dunno,” Tim says. “Maybe.”

“How about this—you don’t have to answer any questions you don’t want to, but if you do want to answer a question, you have to answer it truthfully. Then you can ask me questions, and I’ll do the same thing.”

Tim rolls that over in his mind. It might work. He won’t have to say anything about the monster, and maybe he can ask Doctor García about the things his Mama won’t tell him. “Okay,” he says. “I can ask you any questions?”

“Any questions,” Doctor García says, “but I don’t have to answer them if I don’t want to. Sound fair?”

“Yeah.” Tim turns around so he look at her while he’s putting his puzzle together and she’s asking questions. “You can go first.”

“That’s very polite.”

Tim ducks his head and tries to ignore the way that makes his face feel warm. Mama always says to be polite, but she’s never mentioned it when he is—only when he’s not. It’s unexpectedly nice to have his manners recognized.

“First question,” Doctor García says, and Tim works to refocus himself. “Has your mother explained anything to you about why you’re here?”

Tim considers the question and decides that answering it won’t get him into trouble. “Kinda,” he says. “I guess, anyway. It’s because I get headaches and cough a lot, right?”

“Well, that’s part of the reason,” Doctor García says. “Those are called symptoms. Do you know what those are?”

“Signs of being sick,” Tim says, pleased that he’s able to answer correctly—they’ve been studying being sick in science.

“That’s right.” She beams, like Tim’s done something great, and he feels his face heating up again. She’s being too nice. “Your coughing, and your headaches, those are symptoms of another disease. You’re here because we’re trying to figure out what that disease is.”

“Oh.” That makes sense, he guesses. “So how long is it gonna take?”

“Well, we don’t know, right now. But you’re helping us out a lot by answering these questions. The more we know about what you’re feeling, the more we can help you.”

Then why have they been talking to his mama this whole time? Why not just start by asking him the questions, instead of asking her questions about him? It seems silly, but Tim decides to shrug it off. He’s not a doctor.

“I’d like to ask you a few more things about your symptoms. For example, how often would you say you have your headaches?”

“You already asked these questions,” Tim says. He remembers it clearly—it had been on his second visit here, and the nurses had asked him and his mama questions for a long, long time.

“I know. I’m just double-checking.”

“‘kay. The headaches are not very often. Like, um, maybe once or twice a week?”

Doctor García jots something down on her clipboard. “And how long do they last?”

“Couple hours.”

“And do you experience anything else while you’re having these headaches?”

“Coughing?”

“Besides coughing.”

_The monster,_ he thinks, but he keeps it glued underneath his tongue. “I’m tired, sometimes. And really thirsty.”

“Alright. And do these headaches go away on their own?”

“Sometimes,” Tim says. That’s not a lie—it’s been a long time since they’ve gone away on their own, but it used to happen a lot, before he started the first grade.

“How do they go away the other times?” Doctor García asks, and her eyes are sharp and dark and watching him too carefully.

“The coughing,” Tim says, studying his puzzle box.

“How does that help?”

Tim shrugs. “I start coughing, and then—I dunno. Stuff stops, and then I wake up and my headache’s gone.”

“What do you mean, ‘stuff stops?’”

“It’s like going to sleep, but you don’t dream. It just stops.”

“Has your mother told you anything about seizures, Tim?”

Tim carefully slides another puzzle piece into place. “She talks about it with the nurses.”

“But has she explained to you what they are?”

“No. Is that what I have?”

“It’s another symptom. That’s what’s happening when ‘stuff stops,’” Doctor García says. “Everyone experiences seizures differently, though. Some people feel strange before they have them, some people hear things or see things that aren’t there—”

Tim’s hands jerk, and he folds them quickly under his legs. Other people see things? Other people see things that aren’t there? Is that what the monster is? Is it just a symptom of these—these seizures? If it is, can they give him medicine for it? Can they get rid of it, like they do for colds? Could it be that easy?

“So what about you, Tim?” Doctor García says. “Besides headaches and coughing, does anything else unusual happen before you have a seizure?”

Tim bites his tongue. Hope is welling, raw and dangerous, behind his ribs. If he tells her—if he tells her, can she help him? Will his headaches stop? Will he be able to breathe all the time? Will the monster quit hovering in the edges of his vision like a foul, unyielding shadow?

But Mama will be mad.

“Tim? If anything happens, I need to know. It could really help us to help you.”

“My mama will be angry,” Tim says, looking apologetically at her. “Sorry.”

“This isn’t about your mother, Tim,” Doctor García says. “This is about you. It’s you who’s sick, not her. We’re trying to help you, not her. So if something is happening to _you,_ I need to know.”

Tim swallows hard. “I—I can’t—”

“You can, Tim.”

Oh, god, how he hopes that’s true. Taking a deep breath, he chokes his words out as quickly as he can—before the swell of warmth that comes with her confidence in him dies, before it’s replaced by cold, constant fear. “There’s a monster.”

“A monster?”

There it is—that word, that wretched word, finally out of his mind and in the real world. He nods rapidly. _I’m sorry, Mama, I’m so sorry._ “A monster. It’s a—it’s a tall thing, with a suit, and it’s there more and more and I’m afraid it’s going to hurt me, it hasn’t yet but it’s getting angrier, I know it is, and it’s getting braver too, it’s coming to school with me—”

“Woah, woah, Tim. Easy there, hon. A little slower. What do you see?”

It’s suddenly imperative to tell her everything, before she waves him off and dismisses him and tells his mama he was _bad_ and _playing games_ and _stupid._ So he tells her everything, as quickly as he can without her motioning him to slow down. He tells her what it looks like, where it is, and the awful nasty bad feelings it brings with it. He tells her it’s what makes him cough, it’s what makes his head hurt, and he tells her that it’s going to do so, so much worse if they can’t get rid of it so _please please please_ get rid of it.

She listens.

She listens, and it makes Tim’s heart ache.

When he finally runs out of words to say, he’s clutching the last puzzle piece in his hand hard enough that it hurts, and he’s staring at the ground and he’s remembering how to breathe without having a secret crushing down his shoulders.

“That’s very good, Tim. I’m glad you told me,” Doctor García says, and Tim wants to cry. “It’s going to help us very much, and soon we’ll be able to make you feel better. In the meantime, though, I’m going to put you on an anticonvulsant for the seizures, and I’m going to refer you to a psychiatrist. Do you know what that is?”

Tim shakes his head.

“It’s a person who specializes in diagnosing mental illnesses. If this ‘monster’ is caused by seizures, or if it’s caused by something else, they’ll be able to let us know, and they’ll be able to help us get rid of it. Does that sound alright to you?”

Tim nods, wincing at the word _monster._ He hasn’t heard it spoken out loud for nearly a year—it’s a taboo, bad thing, but now that Doctor García is saying it so reasonably, he doesn’t know why.

Of course, he is abruptly reminded of why when Doctor García tells Mama about the monster. She doesn’t get angry at him while they’re in the hospital, but when they’re home she yells— _you’re not sick, it’s all in your head_ and _just like your father_ and _do you know what everyone will think if they hear about this?—_ and Tim cringes into the couch because she’s mean sometimes, yeah, but she doesn’t usually yell at him so much.

He must have done a really bad thing.

✖✖✖

He runs away before Mama takes him to the psychiatrist. Maybe it’s a stupid, bad thing to do—but he’s a stupid, bad kid whose mind keeps playing stupid, bad tricks on him. Even if it’s stupid, though, it’s not impulsive. He thinks about it for a long time. He thinks about it when he’s at school, learning addition and subtraction. He thinks about it when Mama is smoking and watching TV and telling him to go play in his room. He thinks about it when he sees the monster.

He can’t _stop_ thinking about it.

So he does the next best thing, and he turns those thoughts into plans. He takes all of his homework out of his backpack, and he fills it up with crackers and lunchables and his mama’s soda cans, passing it off as him just snacking a lot. Taking his medicine (the gross pink stuff Doctor García prescribed last time) is a lot harder, since it’s in a bottle, so he doesn’t pack it until after he’s already taken his last dose, and then he packs the whole thing and hopes Mama won’t notice it’s gone until he’s gone. He also packs his Crimson Tide jacket, his furry gloves, and his striped hat, because it’s cold outside and he doesn’t want to get sick. If he got sick, he might have to come back home too soon, and that would make everything worthless.

(He wants his mama to be sorry for being angry at him all the time. He doesn’t want to make her angrier by doing something petty, so this has to be a big deal. It just makes sense.)

Then, one night, when he hears Mama going to bed, he leaves. He shoves on his boots and winter clothes, he lifts his bag over his shoulders, and he sneaks to the front door. He’s extra-careful-quiet unlocking the door, ‘cause he’s terrified of what will happen if Mama wakes up, and he manages to slip outside in near silence.

The world spreads out in front of him, free from Mama’s will over his and safe in thick, heavy darkness. The monster doesn’t seem so scary in the dark, because there’s no light for it to steal, and it just kind of blends in. He sees it in the corner of his eye, and he pays it no mind. It’s being distant today, which he considers a good omen.

Jumping off of his porch, the grass folds and crunches under his boots. It’s drenched in a dazzling layer of frost, and the wind sweeping in from the north is cold and strong. Tim puts his hood up and marches out of his yard and onto the street, aiming his path towards an achingly familiar place—the forest only a couple of miles from his house.

That’ll be the first place they look for him, he knows, since it was where he got lost a whole entire year ago. He’s going to be careful this time. He won’t come out when he hears people yelling for him, or sees them stomping around. Not even if they’re police.

With the ideal of his own courage to bolster him, Tim makes it to the forest before the moon starts to set. He keeps going once he’s inside the shelter of the trees, pressing on and on. He doesn’t know when he’ll stop, but he feels like he’ll know when he should. He feels like some kind of internal compass will let him know when he’s done running.

It does.

After a few breaks to drink juice and rest his legs, he makes it to—somewhere. There’s nothing really significant about it, but he thinks that it’s where he’ll stop. His toes and fingers are cold, even through his socks and gloves, and he settles himself at the base of a great, big tree and blows warm air into his cupped hands.

It would be nice to go back home, he supposes, but his determination isn’t weak enough to be swayed by something like the cold. Not yet, anyway. He’s come to understand that he doesn’t understand himself—the doctors have made sure he knows that. Mama’s made sure he knows that. So he understands himself enough to know that he’s unpredictable, even to himself. Maybe he’ll wimp out. Maybe he’ll get a headache, or have a seizure, and he’ll wake up in a hospital again.

Who knows?

“What do you think?” Tim says, lifting his eyes. The monster skirts away from his direct gaze, unusually shy. It isn’t used to him talking to it—he isn’t used to talking to it. Mama made sure he never did, but he’s sick of Mama telling him what to do. Doctor García said the monster was _his,_ not Mama’s, so why should she determine what he does and doesn’t do with it?

Even if he’s willing to talk to it, though, it doesn’t seem willing to talk to him.

“That’s okay,” he says. “Sometimes I don’t want to talk to people, either.”

So they sit in silence, and the monster leaves him alone. His head feels free and clear, and his lungs are working sharply and cleanly. He feels better here—in this dark, cold forest—then he has at home for a long, long time.

Eventually, he drifts into sleep, and he doesn’t even have nightmares. When he wakes up, he sips on apple juice and cold crackers, and he takes what looks like enough medicine, then decides to explore.

It’s invigorating—he gets to run around wherever he wants, without Mama hovering over his shoulder. The monster’s still hovering, but it doesn’t bother him like she does. It doesn’t care about what he does, as long as he doesn’t—

Doesn’t what? He can’t tell. He can’t tell what it wants, or doesn’t want, but it seems content for the moment, and he’s not going to ruin that.

Trekking around the forest, he finds lots of neat things—giant trees and itty-bitty trees and piles of dead, chilly leaves and smooth stones and even animal dens he knows better than to stick his hand into. They’re probably sleeping, since it’s winter, and he doesn’t want to bother them. He wants them to be warm and happy.

The excitement of his exploration doesn’t wear down until late afternoon, when his stomach starts to rumble and the wind starts to pick up. It’s dragging in bleak, gray clouds, and he wonders if it will snow. He can only remember it snowing once or twice, and while he knows that it might cause him trouble, he still really wants to see it.

He settles in beside another tree, munching on one of his lunchables, and waits. His mind is blissfully quiet and almost unbearably bright when after a few hours a gentle dust of snow begins to settle onto the forest floor. He laughs out loud, scrambling to catch some of the miniscule flakes on his tongue and to cup them in the palms of his hands. Delicate, inconsequential things—his heart aches for them.

He can’t tell whether he feels happy or sad, but either way, he wants to cry. That’s stupid, he knows, but for once he feels like he could let himself. Out here, in the forest, there’s nobody but him and the monster, and what does it care what he does? So he cries until he’s exhausted, dusts himself off, and chases snowflakes.

It’s easy. For once, being him is easy.

He has to quiet down as evening falls, because he can hear far-off shouts and footsteps. They’re calling his name, but the monster stands between him and them, and for once he has no desire to go through it. Let them look. Let them worry.

(Are they worried? Does Mama still care enough to be worried, worried like she was when he got lost the first time?)

A few times, the people come too close to his hiding spot for comfort—he huddles down in his jacket, wishing it weren’t bright red, and he buries himself in dead leaves and broken tree limbs until they drift away again. They don’t ever enter the clearing he’s made into his home, and some distantly grateful part of himself believes he has the monster to thank for that. He falls asleep still hiding.

When he wakes up, dawn is sprawling through the forest like a chilly, orange blanket over a thin layer of snow. Tim’s nose is red and runny, and his fingers are stiff inside his gloves—even so, he doesn’t feel like going home yet. What’s the worst that can happen, anyway? He gets a little cold? What? Is he going to start coughing or something?

Ha.

Still, he’s not a masochist, so he stays curled up in his hiding spot until the sun floats higher into the sky. He drinks more juice and eats a few more crackers, then sets out exploring again. It’s just like yesterday, save for one uncomfortable realization—the monster isn’t with him, anymore.

He has an idea of what that means, and it isn’t anything hopeful or good. It only means that he should go home soon, because some part of him understands that a seven-year-old can’t survive in a forest in the middle of winter (however mild Alabama winters may be), without help. While it sends a shudder down his spine to think that the monster was helping him (why would it? why would he let it?), he accepts the idea with as much dignity as he can muster.

It’s time to go back, because without the monster’s protection, there are things in this forest that want him dead.

Of course, when he gets back, who’s to say his mama won’t want the same thing?

✖✖✖

Mama told him to answer everything honestly, with pinched lips and hollow eyes. She told him not to leave anything out. She told him to talk about the monster. The word was strange, falling from her mouth like a curse, and Tim shook to hear it. Mama had been very, very angry with the _psychiatric referral,_ especially after he’d run away _._ She had almost refused to come, and she had shrieked until Tim’s ears stung while they were talking to the secretary here. She’s tired, and he’s tired, and he’s starting to wonder which one of them is sickest.

He does what she tells him to, though. The psychiatrist gives him papers like his mama’s and explains them in kiddy terms. He’s tempted to tell her he’s not an idiot, but whatever. Maybe he is. That’s what Mama seems to think. She says being here is stupid, and that taking these tests is stupid, because there’s nothing wrong with him.

Maybe she’s the one who’s stupid.

Irritably, Tim goes through the papers—circles answers and writes numbers in the psychiatrist's ballpoint pen. _Do you feel safe in your home?_ Yes.

Scribble it out, try again. Mama said to be honest.

It takes too long, and it’s boring, and after he’s filled out the papers the psychiatrist asks him lots of questions. He squirms in his chair and answers them as best he can, distracted by the growing ache in his head and the itch in his throat. He’s on medicine now, so he can’t have a seizure. It’s nothing to worry about.

Right?

When he does cough, the psychiatrist latches onto it like he’s committed some kind of crime. It makes him kind of angry, but he doesn’t _want_ to be angry. If he’s angry, then he’ll act like Mama, and he hates how she acts. He wants to be nice and happy. The psychiatrist won’t leave him alone, though. She keeps asking questions and writing things down and pointing to his paper and how long was he supposed to be here, again?

“When can I go home?” he asks, drumming his heels against the chair.

The psychiatrist smiles like people smile at dogs when they’re scratching on doors. “Soon, Tim. I believe your mother is still filling out some of your paperwork.”

“Can we play a game?”

The psychiatrist seems to consider it for a moment, then sets her clipboard aside. “Alright. What game would you like to play?”

Tim’s annoyance with her and the papers and the questions vanishes almost instantly. Someone wants to play a game with him? Mama _never_ wants to play games with him. Mama’s too afraid of the monster to play games with him. So what game should they play? He doesn’t want to scare the psychiatrist. “I dunno—um, do you know how to play Tic-Tac-Toe?”

“I do,” she says, smiling and grabbing a blank sheet of paper.

So they play Tic-Tac-Toe until Mama’s done filling out paperwork, and then the psychiatrist pats him on the head and hey, it wasn’t so bad after all. He doesn’t know why Mama is still so angry about it. She’s grumbling under her breath about inadequate doctors and overactive imaginations, and Tim stares out the window and listens to the radio and not her.

The next day, Tim wakes up and the world feels off. He realizes why when he sees sunlight spilling onto his floor—it’s almost nine. Mama didn’t wake him up for school. Scrambling out of bed, he throws on clean jeans and a long-sleeved shirt and rushes to find her. Did she forget? Was she so tired that she slept through her alarm?

Tim bolts into her room, a box of juice squished in his fist. There’s a lump under his mama’s blankets, still and unmoving. “Mama,” he says, racing to the side of the bed and reaching out to poke her—stops himself, because she won’t like that. “Mama, get up. I gotta go to school.”

The lump moves, shifting around ‘till Mama’s back faces him. She doesn’t speak.

“Mama?” He crawls into her bed, holding tight to the blankets in case she tries to push him off. “Mama, are you awake?”

“Go away, Tim,” her voice says from the lump. It sounds rough and angry. “You’re not going today.”

“Why not?” He knows better than to ask, but—but he needs to go to school. Doesn’t he? Won’t his teacher be angry if he’s not there? “Mama, why can’t I go?”

“Because I said.”

“But why? Mama, are you okay? Are you sick?”

“Be quiet. Can’t you leave me alone for one day?”

Tim reaches out, careful and cautious, to touch her hair—he’s always wanted somebody to touch his hair when he’s having a headache. It seems like it would make him feel better, so maybe it’ll make Mama feel better. “I can get you something. Do you want some medicine? And then when you’re feeling better we can go to school.”

“No, we _can’t,”_ Mama says, her voice suddenly rising. She flips over, and her elbow clips his chin. He scrambles backwards, off of the bed and against the wall, eyes wide. “We can’t, because you’re fucking _crazy,_ Tim.”

Her chest is heaving and her face is red—there are dried tear tracks on her cheeks, and Tim feels his own tears welling up. His chin stings, and he’s scared, and what if she hits him again but not on accident this time? “‘m sorry,” he says, pressing himself against the wall like it’ll protect him. “‘m sorry, Mama, I didn’t—I won’t—”

Mama’s face sags, heavy and worn thin. Her whole body goes loose and she drops back onto her bed, curling up around one of her pillows. “I don’t give a shit what you will or won’t. Go on, Tim. Get out. I’m going to sleep.”

Tim bolts when he’s given the chance, shutting the door firmly (but quietly) behind him. He races back to his room and hides himself under his blankets, trying to control his breathing. Why does he feel so scared? Mama didn’t hit him on purpose, and then she just snapped at him a couple of times—he shouldn’t be scared, he’s such a sissy.

Knowing that doesn’t keep tears from streaking down his face, though. His body trembles like he’s caught in a hurricane, and raspy coughs rise up around his sobs. He can breathe, right? Yeah. He can breathe, he can breathe, he’s okay—

He needs to take his medicine before something bad happens, but he’s afraid to leave his room. What if he wakes Mama up? _No no no,_ he doesn’t want her to be angrier, he doesn’t want to make her mad, he just, he wants—

He wants her to like him, like she used to. He wants her to come running, like she did when he was three and he tripped and his lip bled. He wants her to stroke his hair and tell him everything’s alright. He wants her to be alright.

But it’s because of _him,_ he’s ruined everything, because he’s _crazy crazy crazy,_ she finally said it, she finally knows—

Another sob seizes his body and he curls tighter into his blankets, wrenching his fingers into his hair. _Stop, stop crying, you’re such a big baby, you’ll wake Mama up._

So he does. He swallows his tears and rubs vigorously at his eyes with balled fists. His stomach is churning and his heart is thundering somewhere in his throat, but he won’t cry. He won’t be noisy. He won’t be needy. Maybe if he’s good, maybe Mama will like him more—he’ll never talk about the monster, he won’t go back to the doctor’s, he’ll—

He’ll want to break his own head because of how much it hurts, and he’ll cough himself into a panic, and he’ll have his Mama’s love.

That evening, when she comes to him, he could almost cry because of how happy he is (but he won’t.) She scoops him into her lap and sighs into his hair, and he thinks maybe that this is worth anything.

“I’m sorry, Tim,” she says, but her voice sounds uneven. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you. I was just upset. How’s your chin?”

“It’s okay,” Tim says, tucking his head under hers. She’s warm and safe and he loves her so, so much. “‘m sorry too.”

She swallows hard, and he feels her throat bob against his head. “The psychiatrist called back, this morning. She says that they, um, they want to do some more testing.”

“Oh,” Tim says. _Ew. Testing is boring._ “Okay.”

“There’s a—a facility, in this place called Rosswood. They think that they could help you more down there than they can here.”

“Are we gonna go?”

“Yeah, I—I think that would be best. For now, at least. I’ve already called and let them know we’ll be there on Thursday, so we should start packing your things tomorrow.”

“Packing?” Tim says, frowning, then quickly straightening out his expression so it doesn’t upset Mama. “Why do we have to do that? We’re not just visiting, like at the doctor’s?”

“No. This facility, it’s—um, they call it a live-in facility. That means you’ll be living there, instead of here.”

Tim’s stomach drops. He _likes_ it here—he even has kind-of friends at school, like Alex and Ashley. “Really?”

“Yeah. I know you like it here, but I really think the facility would be better for you. They even have their own school, and a playground, and there might be kids your age that you can play with.”

Tim chokes down his displeasure—it tastes like bitter, dusty gravel—and nods. “Yeah, okay. How long are we gonna be there?”

“I don’t know,” Mama says. “Be thinking about which of your things you’ll want to bring, though..”

The _your_ stands out like a sore in her words, sharp and painful, but Tim refuses to acknowledge it. She meant _our._ “Okay.”

“Okay.” Mama bends over and kisses the top of his head, and he thinks that might make everything better. “Did you take your medicine this morning?”

Tim doesn’t meet her eyes, shrinking down into himself.

“Oh, Tim. Did you even eat?”

He didn’t want to wake her up by moving around, so the only room he’s visited today is the bathroom. He doesn’t want to upset her by pointing that out, though, because it might make her feel guilty and he doesn’t want that—not right now, anyway. He probably will, later, and he’ll hate himself for it.

“Alright. Upsie-daisie, kiddo. How does lasagna sound?”

Tim nods eagerly, following at her heels as she moves into the kitchen and starts setting out ingredients She makes him take his medicine, first, and then she lets him help her cook. He mixes up the hamburger, sauce, and cheese, and then he layers it over the boiled noodles when Mama tells him to. They stick it in the oven together—with mitts, ‘cause Mama says that’s important—and then set the timer and sit down in the living room to wait.

For once, Mama doesn’t seem like she’s in a rush to have him go back to his room. She lets him sit with her on the couch and watch cartoons, and she doesn’t even get mad at him for picking at the hole in one of the cushions. He does his best to be quiet and good, because he doesn’t want their time together to end.

They eat dinner in the living room, while Mama watches one of her crime shows. The lasagna is warm and gooey, and Tim’s stomach accepts it greedily—it burns his tongue on the first few bites, but he cools it down with a few gulps of milk and he’s more careful after that. When they’re done eating, Mama washes their dishes and then tells him it’s bedtime.

He considers throwing a fit about it, briefly, but he’s not a baby and he’s not gonna make Mama upset when she’s acting nice. Instead, he follows her obediently back to his room and lets her tuck him in. Then, warily, he asks, “Hey, Mama—um, sorry, but can we read a story? We don’t have to, though, just if you want.”

Mama smiles, and her eyes get watery-bright. Tim’s throat tightens—he’s upset her again, he’s such an idiot, he’s—

“Sure, baby. What story do you want to read?”

Tim points to his bookshelf. “The one about the tree, please.”

_“The Giving Tree?_ Oh, it’s been awhile since we’ve read that, hasn’t it?” Mama sighs, but she doesn’t sound irritated, only wistful. She grabs the book from his shelf and sits beside him, cracking it open in both of their laps. The pages gleam up at him, bright and green. “Alright. Are you comfy?”

Tim nods, snuggling into her side. “Yeah.”

“Do you want to help read?”

“No, thank you. Can you just read tonight?”

“Sure thing.” Mama clears her throat, then says, “‘Once, there was a tree, and she loved a little boy…’”

Tim feels himself drifting off as she reads, sinking into the warm sound of her words in a way he hasn’t for what feels like a long, long time. He finds himself thinking about trees—and about forests, and the monsters that lurk in them. He doesn’t feel afraid, though. Not with his mama so close, and not with his medicine and his easy breathing and his sleepy, not-hurting head. What he does feel is a strange mixture of happiness and sadness—bittersweet, he thinks, is what it’s called.

He doesn’t understand why he feels that, and he certainly doesn’t understand why, when his mother reads the last few lines of _The Giving Tree,_ it sounds like she’s saying goodbye.

“And after a long time, the boy came back again. ‘I’m sorry, boy,’ said the tree. ‘I have nothing left to give you.’” Mama takes a deep breath, as though she’s going to continue, and then shuts the book. “I think that’s enough for tonight, Tim.”

“But what about the part where the tree tells the boy he can sit with her? What about that part?” Tim says, looking beseechingly at her. “It’s just a little longer.”

“I’m too tired, Tim,” Mama says, pushing his hair out of his eyes. Her mouth is pulled into a thin, sad line. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Tim doesn’t argue, even though the story is too sad when it’s left unfinished like that. His Mama _is_ tired—even he can see that. There are bags under her eyes, and Tim has grown used to seeing them there. He wishes he could make her better, but he doesn’t know how. The best he can do, for now, is to nod and let her set the book aside.

“Goodnight,” Mama says, pushing herself off of his bed and turning his night light on. “Sleep tight.”

“Don’t let the bedbugs bite,” Tim says, grinning and burrowing down into his blankets.

“Yes, don’t let the bedbugs bite,” Mama says. She slips out of his room, shutting the door quietly behind her. Tim wants to feel happy, he does. He helped Mama make a good dinner, he took his medicine, he even got to read a story with her—

So why does he feel so bad inside?

✖✖✖

“Tim? Are you done packing?”

“Yeah,” Tim says, hopping off of his bed and gesturing to his boxes and bags. “That one has my bed stuff, and that one has my books, and that one has my bathroom stuff, and that one has snacks, and that one has—”

“Alright, alright, very good,” Mama says, absently running a hand over his head as she stoops to pick up a box. Tim’s chest puffs with pride. “Come on, pick up your bags and carry them to the car.”

“‘kay-o,” Tim says, sliding his backpack—packed once again with snacks and coloring books instead of homework—over his shoulders and grabbing one of the duffel bags Mama had bought for him yesterday. He puts the duffel in the trunk, along with the boxes, and puts his backpack in the floorboard for the trip.

All of his things, when packed, are a collection of exactly seven cardboard boxes, three bags, and a backpack. His room is achingly bare. His bed is nothing but an unfamiliar blue mattress, and his closet is an empty mouth stuffed with hanger-teeth. Tim tries not to stay in there very long, once he’s retrieved the last bag.

“Awesome,” Mama says, after she’s made one last survey of his things. She a smaller box—filled with his medical papers and medicine, he knows—in last, then shuts the trunk.

“What about your stuff? Where’s it gonna go?” Tim asks, trotting after her and back into the house.

“My stuff is staying here, Tim.”

“Oh. Are you gonna buy new stuff there? At the facility?”

“No.” Mama sighs and rubs her eyes. “Let’s sit down, Tim.”

Tim’s stomach twists uncomfortably—sitting down to talk is never a good thing. He plops down onto the couch, rubbing a loose string between his fingers and eyeing the monster where it stands near the doorway. It feels like it’s waiting—like it’s _been_ waiting, for a long time. It makes Tim nervous.

“Tim, I—I don’t know how to tell you this, but I want you to be quiet and let me explain before you start asking questions, okay? Can you do that?” Mama asks. There’s a strain around her eyes, and her fingers are clenched tight over her knees.

“Uh-huh.”

“Great. So, Tim, this facility, it—it’s not for people like Mama. It’s only for people whose doctors say they should go there. I’m not supposed to live there. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah. So you can get Doctor García to say you’re supposed to.”

“No, Tim. I—I’m not sick, so I can’t stay there.”

Fear is swelling, sour and bright, in Tim’s chest. “What do you mean? Where are you gonna stay?”

“I’m staying here.”

“No,” Tim says, and he flinches at the sudden sharpness of his own voice. “No, you can’t. I can’t stay anywhere without you, remember? I’m only a kid, so you have to—to drive me places, and talk to my teachers, and stuff. Right? Who’s gonna do that if you stay?”

“The staff there will take good care of you, honey, and I’ll visit every week—I promise. I’ll call you every night, and I’ll visit every week. That sounds okay, right?”

“No,” Tim says, and the fear spreads down his back and out into his arms and legs. It’s making his hair stand on end, and it’s making his muscles bunch. He wants to—to run, or to jump, or _something._ “No, it’s not. You have to be there.”

“Baby, it’s just like going to school—think of it like that. You’ll go away from Mama for a little while, and other people will take care of you, like your teachers, and then you’ll get to see me again and tell me all about what happened while we weren’t together—”

Tim springs to his feet, balling his fists. He feels tears stinging his eyes, but he’s not going to cry—no way. “No. I won’t go without you. You can’t make me.”

Mama gets to her feet, too, and Tim shrinks away. “I can, but I don’t want to. Please, Tim. This is what’s best for both of us. It’s not a permanent arrangement, it’s only for a little while—”

_“No,”_ Tim says, and wow, he didn’t know his voice could get that loud—he only knows it shouldn’t. He turns, ready to bolt for the door and—and run to the forest, and hide, and they’ll never find him. They can’t send him away if he’s already gone, he won’t let them—

Mama’s hand wraps around his arm and pulls him back. She picks him up, trapping his arms under hers with a strength he forgets she has, when all she looks these days is tired and sad and bitter. He struggles, kicking his feet against her legs and throwing his head back against her shoulder. He’s making sounds he didn’t even know he could make, angry and twisted and scared and he _hates her_.

Mama is talking over him, but her words don’t make any sense. His ears are filled with static, crackling and mad, as she carries him out to the car. She buckles him into the backseat, and he thrashes and yells and tries to bite her as she does. She holds his arms, pressing them against his chest, and he can feel the rapid rise and fall of his breath there.

“You just want to get rid of me,” he snarls, blinking away the terrible sting in his eyes. “You hate me, you just want me gone—”

“That’s not true,” Mama says, and her voice is disgustingly calm—for once, for _once_ . “I’m doing what’s best for us. You’re a child, so I don’t expect you to understand, but I _do_ expect you to conduct yourself like a civilized human being. Now, stop throwing a fit or I’ll take you over my knee and give you something to throw a fit about.”

Tim tries to recoil, but her grip on his wrists is iron. “I hate you,” he says, his voice an ungainly hiss that he doesn’t recognize. “I hate you, I don’t want to go, you can’t make me—”

“Stop shouting, Timothy. Now.”

Tim grinds his teeth together, breath blasting hot and furious through his nostrils. “Let _go,”_ he says, trying to yank his wrists away from Mama. “That hurts.”

“It won’t hurt if you stop trying to get away,” Mama says. “I’ll let you go when you’ve decided you and I can speak like adults.”

“I’m not an adult,” Tim says. So he shouldn’t be going away, he shouldn’t be away from Mama even if he really, really wants to be now. He’s a kid, he should stay home, and go to school, and—and all of that stuff, even if it seems terrible. It has to be better than being sent away like some stupid animal.

“No, you’re not, which is why I’m making this decision for you. I _promise_ it’s going to be better for both of us. They’ll be able to help you there. They’ll be able to get rid of the—the monster. Don’t you want that?” Mama’s voice is softening, turning into something warped and pleading and he loathes it.

“No,” he says. “I wanna stay here. I wanna stay with _you.”_

“Oh, Tim.” Mama drops his wrists and holds her face in her hands. “I know. I know. But you can’t—I can’t take care of you like I should. It’s not healthy.”

“It’s _fine,”_ Tim insists. “I brush my teeth and I eat and I take my medicine and if you want I won’t ever, ever talk about the monster again, I _promise.”_

“It’s not anything you’re doing,” Mama says, sighing so her breath shivers. “It’s not you, baby boy. This isn’t—I’m not sending you away because I want to. I’m sending you away so you can get better.”

“I don’t wanna get better, then. I don’t wanna go away from you. Mama, please.”

“This is a choice I’m making for both of us. Everything will be alright, you’ll see. Now sit up straight, and stop tugging on your seatbelt. Do you want your coloring book?” Mama says, moving away from him and placing his backpack in the seat beside him.

Tim stares blankly at her. He wants to feel angry, or sad, or sick, but—but he’s just tired, all of a sudden. The hopelessness of all his struggling and his arguing sets on him like a wave, cold and unyielding. Mama’s already made the decision for him, so nothing he says or does matters.

Not like it ever did, anyway.

“Here.” Mama sets his animal coloring book and a box of crayons in his lap. “It’s a pretty long drive, so if you need to go the bathroom or anything just let me know. We’ll probably stop for lunch on the way. That’ll be fun, huh?”

Tim nods, just to get her to leave him alone. It won’t be fun—not lunch, not coloring, not driving. This is his last chance to be around Mama, so everything that happens will be—bittersweet, yeah, that’s the word. Sighing, Tim leans his head against the window when Mama shuts the car door.

The two of them don’t speak to each other again, and Tim’s okay with that. He doesn’t know what she could say that wouldn’t make him feel worse, and he’s got nothing to say. His mind feels numb and tired. Thinking is like wading through mud, thick and heavy. It’s easier to just stare out of the window, watching the landscape blur by him in a haze of trees and buildings and fields.

As promised, they stop around noon and Mama buys him McDonald’s. He doesn’t eat—he’s not refusing, not trying to make Mama mad, but he just can’t bring himself to chew or swallow or feel food sitting greasy and warm in his stomach. The thought of it makes him want to gag.

Mama’s disappointed, anyway, but she lets him get away with only a few sips of chocolate milk. Then they’re back on the road, with the world tearing past him, bleak and unceasing. _Welcome to Rosswood,_ a mud-spattered roadsign declares as they enter another town. Mama takes a few back roads, and a forest crops up beside them, sprinkled with frost and evergreens.

At the end of a dirt road, a building crops up—it’s three stories, made of brick and metal and unkind things. There’s a sign out front that declares this place is the Rosswood Psychiatric Institution. The monster stands beside the sign, looking unfortunately ominous there.

Tim sighs.

“Alright, buddy.” Mama climbs out of the car and then picks him out of his carseat, setting him on the ground outside. Grass crunches, dead and dry, beneath his sneakers. He stays close to the familiarity of the car, warily eyeing up the facility as Mama drops his backpack onto his shoulders.

“Let’s go,” she says, striding towards the facility like it’s home sweet home. Some of his apathy having been pushed aside by the sudden strangeness of this place, Tim grudgingly follows after her.

Inside the facility, there’s an office area that smells like lemon tile cleaner and floral perfume. There’s a lady sitting behind a desk, and she smiles too cheerfully at them as they enter. Doesn’t she know they’re unhappy? Doesn’t she know this is bad?  “Hello,” she says. “Welcome to the Rosswood Psychiatric Institution. What can I do for you?”

She and Mama talk for a long time, trading papers and flipping back and forth between tabs on the lady’s computer as Tim sits and fiddles with the zippers on his backpack. The lady keeps giving him little sympathetic glances, but he refuses to meet her eyes. She’s helping Mama get rid of him, after all.

When they’re done signing things and moving all of his boxes and bags into the waiting room, Mama calls him over and bends down in front of him. The lady looks away. “Okay, Timmy,” Mama says, setting her hands on her hips. “You’re all checked in. I’ve got to go now, but I’ll call you tonight, and I’ll be back to see you on Saturday. Alright?”

It’s not alright, but what good will it do him to say that? Still, something in him is clamoring to try—maybe if he shouts more, or kicks more, she’ll take him back home. Maybe if he’s nicer, maybe if he’s quieter and better in school, she’ll love him more. “I don’t want you to go,” he says, voice soft—one last try, one little hope.

Mama kisses his forehead, her lips dry and her breathing uneven. “I know, baby. I don’t want to go.”

But, of course, she does. If she really didn’t want to she wouldn’t. Why does she have to placate him with stupid lies? Tim backs away from her, hunching his shoulders and staring hard at the ground. “Yeah. Whatever.”

“Tim, come on. Don’t be like that. Give me a hug before I go.”

She opens his arms to him and oh, what he wouldn’t have done to get her to do that earlier. Why couldn’t she have done it when he was running from the monster? Why couldn’t she have done it when he was crying for the pain in his head? Why couldn’t she have done that instead of sending him _here?_

“Bye,” Tim says, and his voice is foreign to him, cold and hard.

Mama’s shoulders slump, but she lets her arms drop and rises back to her feet. “Bye, Tim. I love you.”

He glares at the ground and keeps his mouth shut until she’s gone, drifting back out of the double doors and to the car like a ghost—inconsequential, insubstantial. He hears the engine start, and he hears her pull away from the facility, the sound of tires popping on gravel eerily similar to that of crunching bone.

“Timothy?” The woman’s voice startles him from his brooding, and he glances over at her. She smiles her sunny-sweet smile at him. “Hello. I’m Mrs. Reynolds. A nurse will be here shortly to help you move your things into your room, but until then, would you mind sitting down over there?”

Tim sits back down in one of their hard, plastic chairs and swings his feet. A nurse does eventually come, and after rummaging through all of his things and taking the shoelaces from his sneakers, she helps him carry his boxes (minus the one with his papers and medicine) and bags to his room—a small, bleak thing with only a single window. She offers to help Tim set everything up, but it’s something he wants to do on his own.

He gets his bed made—a brown mattress, with his Power Ranger sheets and big blue comforter—and his clothes organized into his drawers, before he breaks. He doesn’t even realize it’s happening before he’s crawling into his bed and sobbing like he swore he wouldn’t, wrapped tight around a pair of his jeans. They still smell like his old closet, and he inhales, terrified that one day they won’t smell like that anymore. _He_ won’t smell like that anymore, like laundry soap and lasagna and his mama’s vanilla lotion.

He’ll be different. This place is his new home, and it’ll change him, and—and—

He is terrified.

✖✖✖

The monster has stopped waiting—it has stopped lurking and brooding and watching. Tim doesn’t know what causes it. Whether it was because the doctors changed his medicine when he entered the facility, or because his mama’s protective presence is nowhere near, he can’t say. It doesn’t matter.

What matters is that the monster is pushing and prying and _hurting_ him. It forces itself into the slim space between his skull and his brain, coiling around and squeezing until Tim just _knows_ his mind is dripping from his ears in a soupy gray mess. It wraps itself around his chest and claws down his throat, tearing away his air and turning his breathing into a heavy, panicky task that he knows he’s no good at.

It’s going to kill him, eventually. He knows that in the way he knows other things—in the way that he supposes is _crazy._ That doesn’t make it any less true to him, but it does to the doctors and the nurses and the security guards. They tell him it’s not real. “Delusions,” they say. “Hallucinations. Here, Timothy, take your medicine.”

He hates the medicine. It’s not the bubblegum liquid Doctor García gave him. It’s nasty, gritty white goop that the doctors won’t even explain to him. Whatever it is, it’s not helping. It does nothing for his headaches, or his coughing, or his seizures. Where they were almost entirely gone, they’ve resurged with a vengeance—he loses time at least once a day, and he wakes up in the facility’s infirmary with leather bands around his wrists and ankles, sore muscles, and a twisting unhappy feeling in his stomach.

So he does the logical thing and he runs. The first time it happens isn’t planned, per se, but the monster is snapping and twisting around him and eating his thoughts. He huddles in the corner—that’s the safest place, back and sides defended and the monster only where he can see it—and hides his eyes in his knees, covers his ears with his hands and screams. The monster won’t listen to him, but maybe—maybe if someone else talked to it—

Nobody will talk to it, though. The nurses and the doctors insist that it isn’t there, just like his mama did. They tell him to quit crying and try to get some sleep, okay, honey, it’ll be gone in the morning. (It won’t be.) They leave him alone with it. They shouldn’t do that. He _can’t_ be alone with it. It’s going to kill him. So, if they won’t stay with him, he’ll go find someone who will.

It seems logical, when he’s crying and everything hurts and it’s two in the morning.

The window in his room is always locked, but the barring is made for larger fingers than his. He wiggles his hand in with little difficulty and fumbles with the latching until his nails tear, but eventually it does open, so it’s worth it. He pushes the window open as far as he can, pops the screen, and climbs outside.

It’s too easy. (The monster isn’t helping him—it’s _not.)_

He runs into the forest with a skewed sense of relief. Forests are familiar and safe and he’s never been hurt there. The monster has always been quiet when he’s in the forest. It’s like base, in a game of tag. But, of course, the monster can change the rules anytime it wants to. Why would it be held down by petty human morals?

It follows him into the forest, and the pain in his head doesn’t stop. His throat is starting to feel tight and dry, and his breath rattles in his chest. What if he has a seizure out here? What if they never find him? What if he gets lost?

Even those ideas are softened by the dark, chilly cradle of Rosswood Park’s forest. There’s a sick understanding that—whatever happens out here—the monster will be watching over him. It won’t kill him while he’s here. (At least, not yet.)

That’s why, when the staff find him the next morning, he bites their hands and claws their eyes and he _wants to stay there._ The forest is safety and quiet and peace, and they drag him from it and back into his room, where the monster looms closer and angrier than ever. He hates them for it—hates them, and Mama, and himself.

He manages to escape a few more times, in the following weeks, but eventually they wisen up and fix his window, and his door, and his curfew. He’s placed on one-to-one watch while they “sort out his medication,” and that makes him angrier than anything. He’s not a fucking _baby,_ he’s seven (almost eight) _,_ he doesn’t need to be _babysat._ They won’t listen to him, though. They never do.

They can’t even tell him it’s because he’s younger, since they do it with the other patients, too. While it’s some comfort to know that there are other people who are—if not exactly like him—at least suffering from similar things, it’s not nearly enough comfort to erase the fact that—

Well, that he doesn’t want to be like them. The concept of growing up, of growing old, with—with this _thing_ around him, it’s—

He thinks he’d rather die.

He doesn’t want to grow up staring out of a locked window, screaming himself mute in the middle of the night, climbing the walls until there are paint chips and blood lodged under his fingernails and—and forgetting. He wants to go back home. He wants to eat warm cookies and go to school and birthday parties and learn to drive like a grown-up and—

Thinking about it makes him feel something ugly inside, so he quits. He’ll get better, Mama said he’d get better. (Of course, she also said she’d call him every night. She only did that for a few weeks—she’s tapered down to bi-weekly calls and monthly visits, now. He dreads the day she doesn’t show up at all.)

He hears the doctors talking over his head, when he goes in for therapy and testing and check-ups. They don’t even bother to lower their voices when they’re talking about him. They probably think he won’t understand what they’re saying, or that he won’t care. He does—he listens to every word and he’ll look them up later, flipping through the pages of an ancient medical tome stolen from behind one of their desks.

“Violent episodes,” they’ll say. “Potential development of dissociative identity disorder.”

“No,” they’ll argue. “Bipolar, he’s bipolar.”

“It’s got to be borderline personality disorder.”

“Anxiety, it’s separation anxiety, didn’t you see how he was with his mother—”

“It’s schizophrenia. Would you just look at his test results?”

“An official diagnosis shouldn’t be made until he’s an adult, we can only speculate—”

He’s not anything of those things. He’s _Tim._ Why don’t they understand that? Why does he have to be something else? Is just _him_ not good enough?

They shuffle his medicine around again, and again, until they find something that works—or, at least, it keeps him placid enough around the monster that he won’t run screaming at the first touch of it in his consciousness. He still sees it, and it’s still hard to breathe, but the medicine makes him...peaceful isn’t the right word, but it’s something near that.

Nothing feels strong enough to make him move. Nothing feels strong enough to make him want to panic, or scream, or cry. Nothing feels strong enough to make him want to think. Nothing feels strong.

That, evidently, isn’t what the doctors want. His medicine changes again, and he’s back to seizing and coughing and forgetting. Every corner he turns the monster lurks around, waiting to send him into a hysterical screaming fit he can’t even bring himself to feel embarrassed about.

Eventually, they settle on a medicine that doesn’t quite make everything stop, but that softens it. His panic is only terrible at night, when nobody is around and he’s locked alone in his room. He’ll scream his stupid head off until the doctors come and give him something stronger, something that numbs the world away and he can finally _sleep._ For a while, that works.

And then, of course, it doesn’t.

✖✖✖

It’s the winter of 1999 and he’s eleven when his mother, officially, has not called him for an entire year. Mark it on your calendars, ladies and gentlemen and everyone in between or outside of that—

Tim had expected it, obviously. He’d expected it since her calls dwindled off to monthlies, then quarterlies, then annuals. He’d expected it since she started talking about her new boyfriend, her new job, her new lack of cigarettes and vanilla lotion. She was changing, and so was he.

The only problem was that they didn’t change together. They changed in different directions, and the momentary scratches between their changes—phone calls and random, hour-long visits—did nothing but hold both of them back and leave them feeling rough and sore-hearted. He wasn’t forgotten (oh, no, of course not, honey, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, his solitary Christmas card let him know), only left behind.

That was fine. Moving forward took an amount of effort he couldn’t find, but he tried his best to be glad that his mother, at least, could do it. Even if it meant abandoning him, even if it meant leaving him, even if it meant breathing and sleeping and going a whole day without the thought of him crossing her mind—

Well, okay.

Even while he knows she won’t call, he finds himself hovering around the telephone in the main room like a buzzard around a wad of guts. He’s not the only one.

“Who are you waiting on?” Mikey—a scrawny patch of insecurity and anxiety wrapped messily in a thin sheet of probably-suicidal—asks him. They’re sitting (through convenience, and no gesture of friendship) next to each other on the couch, staring flatly at the phone as though to summon a call with their eyes.

Tim considers ignoring him, but that seems like more effort than actually answering him would be—Mikey seems like the kind of kid who won’t quit until he’s gotten what he wants. (Namely death, but Tim wouldn’t put it past him to be equally stubborn about other things. Like talking.) “My mom,” he says.

“Oh. Does she call around the holidays?”

“Yeah,” Tim says, because if a lie will get Mikey to quit talking to him, then hey, call him a liar.

“My sisters are supposed to be calling,” Mikey says, and Tim sighs inwardly. “They’re great. They’re in fifth and second grade—they’re just the best, they’re adorable. You’d love them. Everybody does.”

Tim makes a vague nodding motion, letting Mikey’s words fuzz and clog his ears with a distant kind of irritation. The medicine makes it hard to be terribly angry (or terribly anything.) It’s worth it, though, since he’s breathing and thinking and not stuck in a loop of violent, dark-suited panic.

“Do you have any sisters?” Mikey asks, and he reaches over to tug on Tim’s sleeve—as he does, his own sleeve falls back and Tim catches sight of the pristine white bandages encasing his wrists.

That makes him feel...something. “No.”

“Oh.” Mikey sees where his eyes have fallen and quickly tugs his sleeve back down, sitting back. “How about, um, brothers?”

“No.”

“Being a single child must be so weird. I mean, I have—”

“Why do you do it?” Tim asks—it’s not the right thing to say. It’s not appropriate, or well-timed, or respectful, and he doesn’t care. He’s too tired to care.

Mikey winces, his eyes drifting back to the phone. “I don’t—um, can we not talk about that? I’m kind of trying to think about other stuff right now.”

“Oh.” Tim knows what he should say—he should say _sorry,_ right? That’s polite. That’s good manners, but what good have manners ever done him? Instead, he shrugs and moves his gaze away from Mikey. “Okay. Whatever.”

Mikey sighs, his shoulders slumping, and they don’t speak to each other again. Mikey’s sisters must call, eventually, because he’s gone before dinnertime. Tim is the last one in the main room, running his hands over the indents on the couch’s fabric and feeling his stomach grumble until one of the nurses fetches him to eat and take his medicine.

As inconsequential as Mikey is to him, he’s sparked what small, weary curiosity Tim has. Why _do_ people hurt themselves? Tim knows the logistics of it—of course he does, he lives in a mental hospital—but he doesn’t really _understand._ Does it make them feel better? Does it make life seem a little bit brighter, for a little while?

How can he try it?

The hospital’s security makes it difficult to obtain access to anything that could be used to hurt himself, for the most part—but fortunately, self-harm isn’t what Tim’s in for. That’s not to say that they leave safety razors or lighters lying around, but the restrictions around him are less than they would be for, say, Mikey.

For once, he has a goal, and it’s almost enough to make his mind work in the way it used to—loud and bright and bam-bam-bam. Not quite, but almost. He sets about planning, running over ideas and discarding them again and again. It has to be _perfect._ He’s not going to be a self-harmer, and he’s certainly not going to be suicidal, so nobody needs to get that idea into their head and slap him under a suicide watch. He’s just going to try, one time, because he’s bored.

That’s it. Once, done. Nobody knows, nobody’s bothered.

He takes up drawing, for an entire two weeks—he even attends the stupid art therapy classes. He lets them feel comfortable giving him crayons and markers and, eventually, lead pencils. Lets them see that he’s doing great, yeah, he’s totally fine with sharp stuff, he’s just a kid who wants to draw crappy pictures of plants. After two weeks, he breaks his pencil lead on one of his pictures and asks one of the nurses for a pencil sharpener.

They don’t give it to him—they sharpen his pencil themselves—but that’s fine. He can be patient. He’s got nothing better to do, so he waits for another week and tries again. For almost two months, it’s the same routine, and the nurses get used to it. It’s endearingly similar to training cats—time-consuming and unpredictable, but, hopefully, worthwhile.

Sometime into the third month, a distracted nurse hands him the pencil sharpener when he asks for it. His surprise stumps him, momentarily, before he realizes he has to be quick. He ducks his head and curls his palm around the sharpener, hiding it from the nurse’s view—not that it matters. She’s arguing with another patient.

Tim sharpens his pencil, then uses it to loosen the tiny screws on the sharpener and fumbles with the blade until it falls into his hand. He tightens the screws again and hands the sharpener back to the nurse, who doesn’t spare it a glance before tucking it back into the coloring box (and thank god for that, because it’s rather suspicious-looking without a blade.)

Pocketing his new prize, Tim returns to his drawing and sets about making his plant look as smug and self-satisfied as a cat with milk on its whiskers. It’s almost an hour later when someone realizes one of the sharpeners is missing a blade—and it’s not him who’s under scrutiny for it. He’s ushered back into his room until the blade is found by the nurses searching the cutters’ rooms.

Ha—idiots. He wins.

Tim hides his blade in the waistband of his boxers—it’s uncomfortable, but he knows that the nurses won’t look there unless they really, _really_ suspect him, which they don’t. He waits until all the noise dies down outside, until he’s had dinner and meds, and until lights-out check is over. Then, nestled under the safety of his blankets, he has a half-hour to himself before the staff make their next round.

Holding his blade between his fingers, he can’t help but think his victory seems a little lackluster. Maybe that’s the meds talking, though. They tend to make everything seem lackluster. The blade is small and shiny, and he wipes a few specks of pencil lead from its surface before setting it against his lower abdomen—again, a place they won’t check until he’s on suicide watch.

He almost chickens out when he feels the cold metal against his skin. He’s never liked pain, and he really doubts that it’s going to make him feel any better, now. All of his work will go to waste if he doesn’t at least _try,_ though. If so many people here can find comfort in it, then why can’t he, right?

Taking a deep breath and scrunching up his face, Tim draws the blade across his skin in a single, swift movement. Pain, itchy and shivery, bursts quickly from the thin cut he’s created. He winces and hides the blade in his palm again, warming it there. That wasn’t—wasn’t anything great. It hurt.

Ugh, what had he expected? Rainbows and sparkles? Sudden, inexplicable happiness? That’s so stupid. Huffing, he runs his fingers against the cut—a tiny dab of blood greets his fingertips, warm and wet. It doesn’t feel anything like the cuts he’s seen, long and bright and gruesome. Maybe he’s done it wrong?

Well, whatever. It was a stupid idea.

Rolling out of bed, Tim hides his blade in the back pocket of a pair of jeans at the bottom of his drawer. He really needs to throw it away, but if the staff goes through his trash, he’ll get caught. He doesn’t want the extra security, thanks, so he guesses he’ll just have to keep it hidden for now—maybe he can flush it down the toilet tomorrow, or leave it in the showers where it could be anybody’s.

He’s not planning to use it again—but then, he’s not very good at plans. His whole life has been one mad scramble to correct a plan fatally-flawed since his birth, after all.

✖✖✖

Tim sits cross-legged on his bed, turning the picture over and over in his hands and wondering if it really exists. It’s glossy and square, the texture foreign against his fingertips. The colors are bright, the background almost alien. How long has it been since he’s seen a world like the one in the picture—wildflowers and camper trailers and barbeques? How long has it been since he’s been trapped in the same three-story building?

(Eight years, six months, and three days—but who’s counting?)

The picture, a reminder of the things he absolutely aches for, is simultaneously a balm for his curiosity and an irritation to his craving. When does _he_ get to travel? When does he get to roast marshmallows over a campfire and tie knots out of dandelion stems?

Even more importantly, however, is the brand new creature in the photo—it’s small and fat and bundled in more blankets than he can count. Logically, he knows what it is, but he can’t ever remember seeing one in real life. Surely he has, but not since he’s been in the hospital, and every memory before the hospital tends to be fuzzy and undetailed.

(Every memory _in_ the hospital tends to be fuzzy and undetailed.)

It’s a baby. It’s cute (?) enough, Tim guesses, although he’s not really qualified to be the judge of that sort of thing. The only defining feature it lays claim to is a mop of dark hair. _Isabella Marie Ronalds,_ his mother’s handwriting informs him in a chicken-scratch scrawl on the back of the photo. _Born August 17, 2003._

There’s a man standing next to her with hair to match the baby’s and a smile to match the fluorescent lights, fake and yellow, that hang eternally above Tim’s head. The infamous second husband, he supposes. Mother writes, in her attached letter, that maybe they’ll visit sometime.

They won’t, and Tim wouldn’t want them to. A baby shouldn’t be in a place like this. Even if he doesn’t know it—even if he doesn’t want to—he wouldn’t wish this place on a child. He couldn’t give less of a shit about his mother or her new fling, but maybe there’s hope for the kid, at least. It doesn’t need to know a world like Tim’s if it can avoid it.

Sighing, he slides the photo into his bedside drawer and flops back onto his bed. It’s nice of his family to send him the occasional memento, he supposes, but it also just reminds him of everything he’s missing. Even the other adults in this place, the ones that still tell stories, make him jealous—or something of that emotional nature, anyway. They’ve all experienced a world so different from his own.

And why? Because the chemicals in their brain worked differently? Because of a biological decision they had no part in? It’s not fair. And that’s stupid, it’s stupid to wish that things _could_ be fair, but that doesn’t stop Tim from wishing anyway.

God, he can’t wait to get out of here.

But what if they don’t let him? What if, when he turns eighteen, they still want him to stay here? What if they declare him legally insane or some bullshit, what if he’s always going to be a ward of the state? And what if they’re right? What if the monster never leaves, what if his head always hurts and he dies crazy and alone and—

His eyes flicker towards his clothing drawer, but no—he’s not going to do it. Not yet, anyway. There’s going to be a check in just ten minutes, and it’s not worth the long-term consequences of being caught. Instead, he runs the pads of his fingers across his abdomen and his upper thighs, mapping out the scabs there before digging his fingernails in and peeling them away. It’s enough to soothe his thoughts for the time being.

Right on schedule, a few minutes later, there’s a knock on his door. “Come in,” Tim says.

It’s not one of the nurses who step through his door, but his doctor. Surprised, Tim sits up and tries to smooth out his pajamas, for whatever good that does. “Good evening, Tim. I’m sorry it’s so late, but I just wanted to run something by you,” Dr. Fischer says, hovering in his doorway with a clipboard in one hand and a purple ballpoint pen in the other.

“Okay,” Tim says, caught somewhere between curiosity and dread. “Shoot.”

“There’s going to be a social worker here next month, and I wanted to know if you’d be interested in speaking to her. It’s not required, by any means, but—well, you are almost fifteen. I think it would be a good opportunity to start planning your future.”

“Oh.” Tim bites the inside of his cheek. Future—what an exciting, unrealistic word. “Um, sure, I guess. I don’t know. What do I have to do?”

“Nothing but talk, as far as I know. You don’t have to decide right now. I just wanted to give you something to think about.” Dr. Fischer smiles helpfully and adjusts his glasses. “And now that I’ve done that, I’ll say goodnight and be on my way. Goodnight, Tim.”

“Night, Doc,” Tim says. When the door shuts again, he flops back onto his bed with a giant sigh.

This is his chance, right? Talking to the social worker—that’s the start of a different life. Maybe not a normal one, but—but different from now. And honestly? Anything seems like it would be better than the life he’s leading now, if it were different. Monotony is a patient butcher, and it’s been sawing at Tim’s throat for years. So why does his stomach turn at the idea of talking about his future with someone who can actually _do_ something to make it happen?

Is he just tricking himself into thinking he wants out of the hospital? How does he _know_ he wants to leave the hospital? He’s doesn’t know what _out of the hospital_ is like, really. He has vague memories of an old time, an old place, with parks and forests and and so many, many people. Understanding what the outside world is actually like, though, that’s something new entirely. Surviving out there would be impossible.

But—but he wants to, right? (Right?)

He wants to—to drive, and get a job, and live in a house. (Right?)

He wants to be a normal person. (Right?)

Groaning, he flips onto his stomach and buries his face into his pillow. He’s so sick and tired of this—of second-guessing himself and walking on eggshells around his own fucking _thoughts._ Why can’t he just be like everyone else? And why can’t he stop _moping_ about not being like everyone else when he won’t take the steps his goddamn self to make it happen?

Right, then. Fine.

The next morning, during his consultation, he tells Dr. Fischer that he’ll talk to the social worker. It’s time for him to start thinking of the future as a real, tangible thing, and not just an ideal. It’s time that he starts fighting for what he wants, instead of running from what he doesn’t. It’s time to start becoming who he wants to be.

(Ha. If only it were that easy.)

✖✖✖

“—said there was a program, actually, that I could maybe do, since I’m fifteen now. It’s where you go and you learn to drive with an actual instructor, so you don’t need a parent, so I was thinking that maybe I’d like to do that. I’d just need written permission.”

Dr. Fischer hums, rubbing the bridge of his nose and sliding further down in his chair. There’s a look on his face that Tim doesn’t like, like he’s being forced to swallow something bitter. “Yes, I’ve heard of that program. I think we’ve had kids in it before.”

“But?”

“Hm? But what?”

“You were using the voice people use when they’re going to say _but.”_

“Oh. Well, yes, there is a but. Tim, with your condition, it’s going to be very difficult for you to obtain a permit or a license, even if you can pass all of the tests.”

“What? Why?”

Dr. Fischer looks at him the way other people sometimes do, when they remember he’s crazy. “Your hallucinations impair your sense of reality. Your seizures have no predictable cause and remain untreated. Your medication, while lessening their effects, does not do enough to prevent them. You’d have to find a medication that worked, and you’d have to remain both seizure- and hallucination-free for at least six months in order for you to not be considered a driving risk.”

“Yeah, I—that makes sense. Sorry. I just—” Tim hunches his shoulders, ears burning.

“I’m not saying it’s impossible,” Dr. Fischer says, “but it’s going to be difficult. Our primary focus should be on finding a medication or combination of medications that effectively prevents your seizures and hallucinations.”

“And how can we do that? I mean—it’s been, like, eight years.”

“Yes, and we’ve tried just about every medication we can legally give a child your age. When you turn sixteen our options will open more, and there is a medication I’ve been wanting to try. It’s currently doing well on the market, and I have high hopes. But it’s still just a guess-and-see game at this point, Tim, and I’m sorry for that. Your case is peculiar.”

“Yeah.” Tim sits back in his seat, kneading his forehead. “You can say that again.”

Dr. Fischer chuckles and rises, setting his clipboard off to the side. “Well, if that’s all for today, I’ll be seeing you.”

“See you,” Tim says, slipping out of Dr. Fischer’s consultation room and back into the hallway. His breath leaves him in a weary, heavy sigh. What had he expected? Of course he couldn’t drive—what had he been thinking? He’d just hurt someone if he tried. He’ll have to tell the social worker, though, and she’ll be disappointed.

Whatever. He’s used to disappointing people.

There is one small hope he takes away from his meeting with Dr. Fischer, though. It’s small and he hates carrying it around, but it sticks to him like a burr. A new medication—a new chance at a normal life. He’s used to be let down by new medications, but this time, maybe—

Maybe _nothing._ It’s not worth getting his hopes up over.

Returning to his room in a huff of disappointment and irritation, Tim shoves the thought of the new medication from his mind. It haunts him for a couple of days, but once he’s forgotten about it, it doesn’t bother him—at least, not until five months later, when he turns sixteen and Dr. Fischer hands him a file of papers with the word _preaxin_ scrawled sloppily on top.

After that, it’s an ever-present thought. They start weaning him off of his old medication and introducing the preaxin. It’s a process Tim is agonizingly familiar with—but after a few weeks, he thinks that for once, the process may have been well worth it.

He’s stopped having coughing fits, and seizures, and headaches. He’s sleeping better. The nightmares are a softly blurred memory of fears he can’t recall. Whether it’s the sudden influx of rest he’s getting or the preaxin, he can’t say, but his mood improves. The days turn into something halfway interesting. He doesn’t _like_ talking to people, but he’s stopped hating it.

And, best of all, the monster has disappeared.

It’s too good to be true. It _has_ to be too good to be true. Good things, they don’t just—they just don’t _happen_ to him. It’s impossible, and it’s terrifying, this good thing. He’s sick with dread, waiting for the other shoe to drop as days drag into weeks drag into months. When will the monster come back? How furious will it be when it comes back? How sick and scared will it make him?

But it...doesn’t. It’s gone.

For some stupid reason, there’s a grieving hole in the middle of Tim’s chest when he tries to realize that. The monster was the one stable thing in his life, and now—

Well, good riddance. (He misses it.)

Even as he swallows the confusing, sour-sweet pill of his new mental health, it is with some trepidation that he visits Dr. Fischer again, six months later. He has fully prepared himself for a, “We regret to inform you…” or an “I’m sorry, son, but the medication…”

So, when Dr. Fischer hands him a signed permission slip to get his learner’s permit, he’s too baffled to be even register how fucking happy he should be.

“What—what’s this?” he asks, turning it over in his hands like an alien object.

“A permission slip,” Dr. Fischer says, and there’s a small, clever smile on his face. “You wanted to learn to drive, didn’t you? Just give that to Ms. Ann when she visits later.”

“What? You mean—really? Seriously?” There’s a smile spreading across his face, slow and heavy as butter and achingly unfamiliar.

“It’s been six months since your last seizure,” Dr. Fischer says. “Congratulations. I don’t mean to give you false hope, but I think we’ve finally turned a corner.”

Tim laughs—he fucking _laughs,_ he’s so goddamn happy. “My god,” he says. “That’s—that’s awesome, that’s great. Thank you so much.”

“It’s my pleasure, son,” Dr. Fischer says, clapping him on the shoulder, and Tim can’t even bring himself to move away.

He’s so happy. He’s so goddamn fucking _happy,_ for once in his godforsaken life. He’s healthy, he’s whole, he’s going to get to drive, maybe he can get a job, maybe he can move out—

Or maybe he can shiver under his covers each night, tracing his fingers over the thin cuts on his skin and remembering that he’s Tim Wright and nothing is going to stay this good for him because he’s always been a self-sabotaging fuckup.

✖✖✖

“Oh, Tim, I’m so proud.” Ms. Ann is beaming at him, and at the silly piece of paper in his hand, like they’re the sun. Ducking his head, Tim tries hard to ignore how much her words delight him. It’s not like she means them. She’s a social worker. She probably says that shit to twenty fucked-up kids a day. “That’s great, that’s really great. Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” Tim says, sliding the paper back onto his desk—his GED, completed after twelve agonizing years of schooling and specialized online lessons in the hospital. “It’s really nothing.”

“Do you know what this means?” Ms. Ann says, and she looks so excited that Tim is vaguely worried for her health.

“It means I have a GED?”

“Well, yes, silly, but it also means that I think we’re really ready to start transitioning you out of the hospital. You’re eighteen, you’ve got an education, you’ve got a license, you’ve been through our adult life classes—I think you’re ready to start moving up in the world.”

Tim’s stomach drops like a rock, sitting heavy and cold in his abdomen with a force that takes his breath away. Out of the hospital? Into the real world? What? What the fuck? “What? You, uh—what?”

“Since you’re a ward of the state, our programs allow us to offer you a four-year full-ride scholarship to several community colleges. I honestly believe that you would do well at any of them—you’re a very smart boy.”

“You mean—you mean you want me to go to college?” Tim asks, and the word is foreign on his tongue—the thought is foreign in his mind. College is for kids with parents, and brains that work, and—and kids that aren’t him. “Now?”

“Well, not until the fall semester. We can take tours of whichever campuses you’d like, and we can begin applying now. You’ve taken the ACT, haven’t you? Brilliant. I’ll have to talk to Dr. Fischer, but I’m almost entirely sure he’ll agree with me. College is a wonderful transitioning area—it’s not entirely uncontrolled, and you won’t be on your own, but you’ll have much more independence than you have here.”

“I, uh, I—” He’s not sure what to say, and he’s not sure what to feel. This should be good, right? Ms. Ann is smiling, and her voice is happy, so Tim should be happy—but he’s not. There’s a ball of terror, frozen and sharp, swelling in in the hollow of his ribcage and chilling his bones. “I’m not sure. That’s—that’s a big deal.”

“It is,” Ms. Ann says, and her face creases sympathetically. She reaches to pat his arm, then hesitates and folds her hands back into her lap. “You don’t have to decide right away, of course. I know this must be scary for you, but I honestly think it’s an amazing opportunity. You should consider it.”

Tim swallows hard, and he hears his own saliva clicking wetly in his throat. “I will,” he says, and he’s stunned to realize that he means it. When Ms. Ann leaves later that day, his hands are wrapped nervously around a packet of papers—college information and requirements, scholarships and schedules and bright, terrifying opportunities.

✖✖✖

He is so scared. Oh, god. He’s going to be sick. His stomach is twisting and rolling and maybe he’s caught a bug, maybe he’s got the flu, how is he going to take care of himself if he has the flu, he’s never—he’s never done that before, he’s—

“Tim.” Ms. Ann beckons him forward, into the secretary’s office. “Come on.”

Tim shuffles inside, the rasping of his breath too loud in his own ears. What if they wreck on the way to the campus? What if his paperwork got messed up? What if they change their minds and don’t want him to go to school there? What if his scholarship information got lost? He can’t pay for college on his own—he doesn’t have a job, he’s never had a job. Can he even get a job? Who’s going to hire someone like him?

Ms. Ann and Mrs. Reynolds are pouring over paperwork, numbers and lines of details that blur into a petrifying future in Tim’s head. Something is going to go wrong. Something _always_ goes wrong. How do they expect him to fumble his way through college successfully? What if he has another seizure, what if his hallucinations come back, what if he forgets to take his medication, what if—

“Just sign here and initial here, please, Tim,” Mrs. Reynolds says, pushing a sheet of paper in his direction. _DISCHARGE_ is typed, bold and neat, across the top of it, and Tim’s heart rockets up another fifty million notches.

He takes Mrs. Reynolds’ pen in cold, clammy hands and shakily signs the papers. He’s eighteen now, that’s right, he can control his own life with a few strokes of ink—

The prospect makes him want to throw up.

“Great,” Mrs. Reynolds says, clapping her hands together with a noise that makes Tim flinch. “You’re all set. Good luck out there, okay?”

“Okay. Thanks,” Tim says, his voice creaking. He clears his throat and steps back, jamming his hands into his pockets and waiting for Ms. Ann’s instructions. At least she’s going with him. At least he doesn't have to do this entirely alone.

“Thanks so much, Mrs. Reynolds,” Ms. Ann says, moving towards the front doors with undeniable cheer in her step. A nurse unlocks the doors for her, and she steps outside with all the confidence Tim is dying to feel. He moves after her in what can only be called a slink, slow and wary. The outside air brushes up against his face, chilly and new—he’s been outside before, obviously, but this is different. This time, nobody is going to make him go back inside.

This time, he’s free.

God, fuck, why is that such a scary thought?

Stepping across the hospital’s entryway feels final, and it sends his stomach rolling all over again. He keeps his head down, focusing on the grass beneath his feet as he follows Ms. Ann across the yard and towards her car. His things are already in the trunk—they’d been sent out in packing boxes with a few nurses earlier in the day.

Ms. Ann pulls her keys out of her pocket, and the answering beep of the car makes Tim jump—a fucking mouse, him. He clambers into the car’s passenger seat, pulling his seatbelt across his chest and buckling it with shaking fingers. Beside him, Ms. Ann’s voice is warm, bubbling background noise that does little to soothe him.

The car starts with a smooth rumble, and Tim’s fingers tighten on the armrest. They’re leaving. He’s leaving. He’s leaving the hospital, and he’s not coming back.

Oh god.

“How’s the temperature, Tim?” Ms. Ann asks. “Do you need me to turn the AC on?”

“I’m fine,” Tim says, even though he’s really, really not.

“Do you mind if I turn the radio on?”

“No.”

Classical music, gentle and soft, rises to fill the empty space in the car and Tim latches hard to it, trying to drown out his awful emotions. They pull away from the hospital, and Tim watches it disappear in the rearview mirror with an awful, longing knot in his stomach. Is that the last time he’ll see it? Half of him hopes so, and half of him is too terrified to even comprehend that.

Despite its negative connotation in his mind, the hospital _has_ been his home for the last eleven years. It’s where he learned multiplication, and spelling, and coloring, and cutting, and driving, and how to be crazy without bothering other people. The doctors and the nurses have been like—like what Tim imagines a family should have been. They gave him presents on his birthday, and they fed him and took care of him and filled the raw, empty space his mother had left as best they could.

Now he was leaving, and they didn’t want him to come back. _He_ didn’t want him to come back, but the idea of something so final, so irreversible—

It’s horrible. What if’s are filling his head, fighting their way into the forefront of his mind on another wave of nervous nausea. He drums his fingers on his thigh, longing—like the sick idiot he is—for a razor. A swift, sharp slice of pain would make the unpleasant rattle of his thoughts dim down.

Leaning his head against the window pane, Tim watches the forest blur past him, grays and greens and browns. He fancies that, for a moment, he can see a graceless shadow stooped inside of it. But no—no, that’s only imagination, and imagination can’t hurt him. He has bigger, scarier things to worry about than that, like the future.

He’s never had to worry about the future before.

They reach Clarkston shortly after one that afternoon, and they reach Clarkston Community College ten minutes after that. As weak-kneed as a newborn fawn, Tim drags himself from Ms. Ann’s car and out onto the asphalt of the parking lot. There are other cars around them—other cars, and other people.

Tim’s been outside of the hospital before, but never for long. He’s taken quick trips to stores, or parks, but only ever with supervision. To be around so many people, and with the knowledge that soon Ms. Ann will leave and he’ll be on his own—it’s nerve-wracking. How much does he stand out from everyone else? He made sure to wear plain clothes, just jeans and a t-shirt and that’s okay, right? For August in Alabama, that’s fitting, right?

Looking around at all of the other people—students and their parents heading, presumably, to the same place as Tim—lets him know that yeah, it’s fine. Everyone else is wearing similar things. That eases him, some, but not enough. What if he stands out in other ways? What if they try to talk to him and he doesn’t know what to say? What if they make jokes that he doesn’t understand?

“Here, Tim, come grab your things. You’re in Willow Hall, aren’t you?”

Startled from his thoughts, Tim rushes to help Ms. Ann gather his few boxes from her trunk. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I think so.”

Holding up a map of the campus, Ms. Ann quickly locates Willow Hall and sets off with a confident stride that Tim appreciates. At least one of them knows what they’re doing. Hurrying after her, Tim does his best not to look like an idiot, even though his heart in is his throat. He knows it’s illogical, but he feels like all eyes are on him as they move through the campus. What are they thinking? What do they think of him?

Willow Hall is on the eastern side of the campus, surrounded—predictably—by a thicket of weeping willow trees. Groups of freshman, their arms filled with boxes and laden with bags, move in and out in confused, babbling batches. A couple of seniors stand at the front door, attempting to direct the influx of new students to their correct dorms.

Tim shrinks behind Ms. Ann, and he certainly doesn’t feel brave, or like an adult, as he lets her do all of his talking for him. They find out that he’s in Room 320, and they spend another fifteen minutes wandering around the lay of the building just to find it. It’s with a swell of relief that Tim discovers he doesn’t have a roommate this year—a rarity among freshman that he has Ms. Ann to thank for, no doubt.

Setting his boxes on the floor of his room, he tries to stretch the tension out of his muscles with little success. “Okay,” he says, glancing around—it’s so _different._ After eleven years of living out of the same room, it’s incredibly strange. “So I guess this is it.”

“It’ll take some work, but I think you can make it really homey in here,” Ms. Ann says, setting her hands on her hips. “Alright. You’ve got your paperwork, you’ve got your medication, you’ve got your books and your room supplies. That’s it, right? So do you need help setting up your things?”

“No, I’m—I think I’m good,” Tim says. He’s not a child, and he shouldn’t need her help to do basic things. That’s what living on his own is about, right? Doing things for himself? Being independent and self-sufficient and shit?

“And you know what you’re supposed to be doing? You know where you’re going? You have freshman orientation this evening, so—”

“I think I’ve got it,” Tim says, trying to emulate the confidence in her voice.

Ms. Ann clasps her hands in front of her and smiles wistfully at him. “I’m glad. You’re going to be just fine, Tim. You have my number if you need anything—anything, alright? Even if it’s just an ear to listen.”

Tim feels the side of his mouth quirking up and he lets it. If nothing else, she deserves a smile for teaching him and carving out his opportunities as he clawed his fool way into adulthood. “Okay,” he says. “So I guess, uh, I’ll see you around?”

“Of course,” Ms. Ann says. “I’ll be meeting with you regularly to see how things are going, and I’ll be keeping an eye on your grades—so no slacking, Mr. Wright.” She points a finger at him, and he ducks his head and grins at the floor. Slacking. He finally has something to slack at. “Your scholarship is based on your GPA.”

“You got it,” Tim says. He takes a deep breath, wipes his hand on his jeans, and extends it to her. “Thanks for everything.”

Ms. Ann takes his hand in her own, small and warm and dry, and shakes it firmly. “You’re very welcome.”

She lets herself out of his room, and he feels a different kind of pang as she leaves—not grieving sadness, like he feels for the hospital, but a content kind of sadness, which is a strange thing in and of itself. It’s not like he’s losing her forever, not like his mother or his doctors or his hospital. But he’s still sad to see her go, even if it’s only for a little while. It’s a funny feeling.

Sighing, Tim sits on the edge of his bed. The mattress is strange and unfamiliar, puke green where he’s used to it being brown and squeaky in all the wrong places. This whole place is unfamiliar, actually. The window is bigger and on the opposite side of the room and—fancy that—it’s unlocked. He likes it that way. Seized by a sudden urge, Tim strides to the window and pushes it open. Warm, late summer air greets him with a host of foreign smells. Cafeteria food, car exhaust, flowers and pollen and mowed grass.

After taking a few deep, blissful breathes, Tim moves back to his boxes and starts unpacking. It takes him a couple of hours to get everything just how he wants it, and even then, the whole place still feels strange and off-kilter. That’s normal, he supposes. It’s not what he’s used to. It’s new. For the first time, the word doesn’t make his stomach twist. Baby steps.

Maybe he’ll be okay. Maybe he won’t be, but maybe he will be. It’ll take time, and it won’t always be easy or pleasant, and he won’t always _feel_ like he’s okay, but—yeah. He thinks he might, maybe, just be able to do it.


End file.
